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1
LAND AND SEA TALES
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
Books by Rudyard Kipling
f
Actions and Reactions
Brushwood Boy, The
Captains Courageous
Collected Verse
Day’s Work, The
Departmental Ditties
AND Ballads and Bar¬
rack-Room Ballads
Diversity of Crea¬
tures, A
Eyes of Asia, The
Feet of the Young
Men, The
Five Nations, Thb
France at War
Fringes of the Fleet
From Sea to Sea
History of England, A
Irish Guards in the
Great War, The
Jungle Book, The
Jungle Book, Second
Just So Song Book
Just So Stories
Kim
Kipling Anthology
Prose and Verse
Kipling Stories and
Poems Every Child
Should Know
Kipling Birthday Book,
The
Letters of Travel
Life’s Handicap: Being
Stories of Mine Own
People
Light That Failed,
The
Many Inventions
Naulahka, The (Withi
Wolcott Balestier)
Plain Tales From the
Hills
Puck of Poor’s Hill
Rewards and Fairies
Rudyard Kipling’s
Verse: Inclusive Edi¬
tion, 1885-1918
Sea Warfare
Seven Seas, The
Soldier Stories
Soldiers Three, The
Story of the Gadsbys,
AND In Black and
'White
Song of the English,
A
Songs from Books
Stalky & Co.
They
Traffics and Discover¬
ies
Under the Deodars,
The Phantom ’Rick¬
shaw, AND Wee Willie
WiNKIE
With the Night Mail
Years Between, The
i
Land and Sea Tales
for Boys and Girls
By Rudyard ^ipling/
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1895, 1897, 1898, 1900, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1923, BY
RUDYARD KIPLING V
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, CARDEN CITY, K. T.
First Edition
©C1A760863
NOV 13 '23
''AO ■V'
PREFACE
To all to whom this little book may come —
Health for yourselves and those you hold
most dear;
Content abroad, and happiness at home,
And — one grand secret in your private
ear: —
Nations have passed away and left no
traces^
And History gives the naked cause of it —
One single, simple reason in all cases;
They fell because their people were not fit.
Now, though your Body be mis-shapen,
blind.
Lame, feverish, lacking substance, power
or skill.
Certain it is that men can school the Mind
To school the sickliest Body to her will —
As many have done, whose glory blazes
still
Like mighty fires in meanest lanterns lit:
Wherefore, we pray the crippled, weak
and ill —
Be fit — be fit ! In mind at first be fit !
vi PREFACE
And, though your Spirit seem uncouth or
small,
Stubborn as clay or shifting as the sand.
Strengthen the Body, and the Body shall
Strengthen the Spirit till she take com¬
mand;
As a bold rider brings his horse in hand
At the tall fence, with voice and heel and bit.
And leaps while all the field are at a stand.
Be fit — be fit! In body next be fit!
Nothing on earth — no arts, no gifts, nor
graces —
No fame, no wealth — outweighs the
want of it.
This is the Law which every law embraces —
Be fit — he fit! In mind and body he
jit!
The even heart that seldom slurs its beat —
The cool head weighing what that heart
desires —
The measuring eye that guides the hands
and feet —
The Soul unbroken when the Body tires —
These are the things our weary world
requires
Far more than superfluities of wit;
PREFACE vii
Wherefore we pray you, sons of generous
sires,
Be fit — be fit! For Honour’s sake be fit.
There is one lesson at all Times and
Places —
One changeless Truth on all things
changing writ.
For hoys and girls, men, women, nations,
races —
Be fit — be fit! And once again, be fit!
*
CONTENTS
Winning the Victoria Cross
PAGE
I
The Way That He Took .
27
An Unqualified Pilot ....
. 6s
The Junk and the Dhow
. 84
His Gift .
. 91
The Master^Cook .
. II8
A Flight of Fact .
. 123
“Stalky” .
. 149
The Hour of the Angel ....
182
The Burning of the Sarah Sands .
•
(— (
00
The Last Lap .
• 199
The Parable of Boy Jones
. 203
A Departure .
. 222
The Bold Trentice ....
. 227
The Nurses .
. 246
The Son of His Father
. 251
An English School .
. 291
A Counting-Out Song ....
• 319
IX
•Vv .
(' ' '■ ■■ '
'r
$
V
WINNING THE VICTORIA CROSS
Land and Sea Tales
For Boys and Girls
WINNING THE VICTORIA CROSS
The history of the Victoria Cross has
been told so often that it is only neces¬
sary to say that the Order was created by
Queen Victoria on January 29th, 1856, in
the year of the peace with Russia, when the
new racing Cunard paddle-steamer Persia
of three thousand tons was making thirteen
knots an hour between England and Amer¬
ica, and all the world wondered at the ad¬
vance of civilization and progress.
Any officer of the English Army, Navy,
Reserve or Volunteer forces, from a duke to
a negro, can wear on his left breast the little
ugly bronze Maltese cross with the crowned
lion atop and the inscription ‘‘For Valour”
below, if he has only “performed some signal
act of valour” or devotion to his country
“in the presence of the enemy.” Nothing
2
LAND AND SEA TALES
else makes any difference; for it is explicitly
laid down in the warrant that ‘"neither rank,
nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other
circumstance whatsoever, save the merit of
conspicuous bravery, shall be held to es¬
tablish a sufficient claim to this Order.”
There are many kinds of bravery, and if
one looks through the records of the four
hundred and eleven men, living and dead,
that have held the Victoria Cross before
the Great War, one finds instances of every
imaginable variety of heroism.
There is bravery in the early morning,
when it takes great courage even to leave
warm blankets, let alone walk into dirt, cold
and death; on foot and on horse; empty or
fed; sick or well; coolness of brain^ that
thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all
through the long, murderous day; bravery
of the mind that makes the jerking nerves
hold still and do nothing except show a good
example; sheer reckless strength that hacks
through a crowd of amazed men and comes
out grinning on the other side; enduring
spirit that wears through a long siege, never
losing heart or manners or temper; quick,
flashing bravery that heaves a lighted shell
overboard or rushes the stockade while
THE VICTORIA CROSS
3
others are gaping at it, and the calculated
craftsmanship that camps alone before the
angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, and cleanly and
methodically wipes out every soul in it.
Before the Great War, England dealt with
many different peoples, and, generally speak¬
ing, all of them, Zulu, Malay, Maori,
Burman, Boer, the little hillsman of the
Northeast Indian Frontier, Afreedi, Pathan,
Biluch, the Arab of East Africa and the
Sudanese of the North of Africa and the
rest, played a thoroughly good game. For
this we owe them many thanks; since they
showed us every variety of climate and
almost every variety of attack, from long-
range fire to hand-to-hand scrimmage; ex¬
cept, of course, the ordered movements of
Continental armies and the scientific ruin
of towns. . . . That came later and on
the largest scale.
It is rather the fashion to look down on
these little wars and to call them “military
promenades” and so forth, but in reality
no enemy can do much more than poison
your wells, rush your camp, ambuscade
you, kill you with his climate, fight you body
to body, make you build your own means of
communication under his fire, and horribly
4
LAND AND SEA TALES
cut up your wounded. He may do this
on a large or small scale, but the value of
the teaching is the same.
It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs
that many of the first Crosses were won;
and some of the records for the far-away
Crimea and the Indian Mutiny are well
worth remembering, if only to show that
valour never varies.
The Crimea was clean fighting as far as
the enemy were concerned, — for the very old
men say that no one could wish for better
troops than the Russians of Inkerman and
Alma, — but our own War Office then, as
two generations later, helped the enemy
with ignorant mismanagement and neglect.
In the Mutiny of 1857 all India, Bengal and
the North West Provinces, seemed to be
crumbling like sand-bag walls in flood,
and wherever there were three or four Eng¬
lishmen left, they had to kill or be killed
till help came. Hundreds of Crosses must
have been won then, had anybody had time
to notice; for the average of work allowing
for the improvements in man-killing ma¬
chinery was as high as in the Great War.
For instance — this is a rather extensive
and varied record — one man shut up in the
THE VICTORIA CROSS
S
Residency at Lucknow stole out three times
at the risk of his life to get cattle for the
besieged to eat. Later, he extinguished a
fire near a powder-magazine and a month
afterwards put out another fire. Then he
led twelve men to capture two guns which
were wrecking the Residency at close
range. Next day he captured an outlying
position full of mutineers; three days later
he captured another gun, and finished up
by capturing a fourth. So he got his Cross.
Another young man was a lieutenant in
the Southern Mahratta Horse, and a full
regiment of mutineers broke into his part
of the world, upsetting the minds of the
people. He collected some loyal troopers,
chased the regiment eighty miles, stormed «
the fort they had taken refuge in, and killed,
captured or wounded every soul there.
Then there was a lance corporal who
afterwards rose to be Lieutenant-Colonel.
He was the enduring type of man, for he won
his Cross merely for taking a hand in every
fight that came along through nearly seventy
consecutive days.
There were also two brothers who earned
the Cross about six times between them for
leading forlorn hopes and such-like. Like-
6
LAND AND SEA TALES
wise there was a private of ‘‘persuasive
powers and cheerful disposition,” so the
record says, who was cut off with nine
companions in a burning house while the
mutineers were firing in at the windows.
He, however, cheerfully persuaded the
enemy to retire and in the end all his party
were saved through his practical “cheer¬
fulness. ” He must have been a man worth
knowing.
And there was a little man in the Suther¬
land Highlanders — a private who eventually
became a Major-General. In one attack
near Lucknow he killed eleven men with
his claymore, which is a heating sort of
weapon to handle.
Even he was not more thorough than two
troopers who rode to the rescue of their
Colonel, cut off and knocked down by
mutineers. They helped him to rise, and
they must have been annoyed, for the three
of them killed all the mutineers — about
fifty.
Then there was a negro captain of the
foretop, William Hall, R. N., who with two
other negroes, Samuel Hodge and W. J.
Gordon of the 4th and ist West Indian
Infantry, came up the river with the Naval
THE VICTORIA CROSS
7
Brigade from Calcutta to work big guns.
They worked them so thoroughly that each
got a Cross. They must have done a good
deal, for no one is quite so crazy reckless as
a West Indian negro when he is really
excited.
There was a man in the Mounted Police
who with sixty horsemen charged one thou¬
sand mutineers and broke them up. And
so the tale runs on.
Three Bengal Civilian Government offi¬
cers were, I believe, the only strict non-
combatants who ever received the Cross.
As a matter of fact they had to fight with
the rest, but the story of ‘‘Lucknow’’
Kavanagh’s adventures in disguise, of Ross
Mangle’s heroism after the first attempt to
relieve the Little House at Arrah had failed
(Arrah was a place where ten white men
and fifty-six loyal natives barricaded them¬
selves in a billiard-room in a garden and
stood the siege of three regiments of muti¬
neers for three weeks), and of McDonnel’s
cool-headedness in the retreat down the
river, are things that ought to be told by
themselves. Almost any one can fight well
on the winning side, but those men who can
patch up a thoroughly bad business and pull
LAND AND SEA TALES
S
it off in some sort of shape, are most to be
respected.
Army chaplains and doctors are officially
supposed to be non-combatants — they are
not really so — but about twenty years after
the Mutiny a chaplain was decorated under
circumstances that made it impossible to
overlook his bravery. Still, I do not think
he quite cared for the publicity. He was a
regimental chaplain — in action a chaplain
is generally supposed to stay with or near
the doctor — and he seems to have drifted
up close to a cavalry charge, for he helped
a wounded officer of the Ninth Lancers into
an ambulance. He was then going about
his business when he found two troopers
who had tumbled into a water-course all
mixed with their horses, and a knot of
Afghans were hurrying to attend to them.
The record says that he rescued both men,
but the tale, as I heard it unofficially, de¬
clares that he found a revolver somewhere
with which he did excellent work while the
troopers were struggling out of the ditch.
This seems very possible, for the Afghans do
not leave disabled men without the strongest
hint, and I know that in nine cases out of
ten if you want a coherent account of what
THE VICTORIA CROSS
9
happened in an action you had better ask
the chaplain or the Roman Catholic priest
of a battalion.
But it is difficult to get details. I have
met perhaps a dozen or so of V. C.’s, and in
every case they explained that they did the
first thing that came to their hand without
worrying about alternatives. One man
headed a charge into a mass of Afghans, who
are very good fighters so long as they stay
interested in their work, and cut down five
of them. All he said was: ‘‘Well, they were
there, and they couldn’t go away. What
was a man to do.^ Write ’em a note and
ask ’em to shift?”
Another man I questioned was a doctor.
Army doctors, by the way, have special
opportunities for getting Crosses. Their
duty compels them to stay somewhere
within touch of the firing line, and most of
them run right up and lie down, keeping an
eye on the wounded.
It is a heart-breaking thing for a doctor
who has pulled a likely young private of
twenty-three through typhoid fever and set
him on his feet and watched him develop,
to see the youngster wasted with a casual
bullet. It must have been this feeling that
lO
LAND AND SEA TALES
made my friend do the old, splendid thing
that never grows stale — rescue a wounded
man under fire. He won this Cross, but all
he said was: didn’t want any unauthor¬
ized consultations — or amputations — while
I was Medical Officer in charge. ’Tisn’t
etiquette.”
His own head was very nearly blown off
as he was tying up an artery — for it was
blind, bad bushfighting, with puffs of smoke
popping in and out among the high grass
and never a man visible — but he only
grunted when his helmet was cracked across
by a bullet, and went on tightening the
tourniquet.
As I have hinted, in most of our little af¬
fairs before the war, the enemy knew noth¬
ing about the Geneva Convention or the
treatment of wounded, but fired at a doctor
on his face value as a white man. One
cannot blame them — it was their custom,
but it was exceedingly awkward when our
doctors took care of their wounded who did
not understand these things and tried to
go on fighting in hospital.
There is an interesting tale of a wounded
Sudanese — what our soldiers used to call a
'‘fuzzy” — who was carefully attended to in
THE VICTORIA CROSS
II
a hospital after a fight. As soon as he had
any strength again, he proposed to a native
orderly that they two should massacre all
the infidel wounded in the other beds. The
orderly did not see it; so, when the doctor
came in he found the “Fuzzy” was trying
to work out his plan single-handed. The
doctor had a very unpleasant scuffle with
that simple-minded man, but, at last, he
slipped the chloroform-bag over his nose.
The man understood bullets and was not
afraid of them; but this magic smelly stuff
that sent him to sleep, cowed him altogether,
and he gave no more trouble in the ward.
So a doctor’s life is always a little hazard¬
ous and, besides his professional duties, he
may find himself senior officer in charge of
what is left of the command, if the others
have been shot down. As doctors are al¬
ways full of theories, I believe they rather
like this chance of testing them. Sometimes
doctors have run out to help a mortally
wounded man of their battalion, because
they know that he may have last messages
to give, and it eases him to die with some
human being holding his hand. This is a
most noble thing to do under fire, because
it means sitting still among bullets. Chap-
12
LAND AND SEA TALES
lains have done it also, but it is part of what
they reckon as their regular duty.
Another V. C. of my acquaintance — he
was anything but a doctor or a chaplain —
once saved a trooper whose horse had been
killed. His method was rather original.
The man was on foot and the enemy — Zulus
this time — was coming down at a run, and
the trooper said, very decently, that he did
not see his way to perilling his officer’s life
by double-weighting the only available
horse.
To this his officer replied: “If you don’t
get up behind me. I’ll get off and give you
such a licking as you’ve never had in your
life.” The man was more afraid of fists
than of assagais, and the good horse pulled
them both out of the scrape. Now by our
Regulations an officer who insults or
“threatens with violence” a subordinate in
the Service is liable to lose his commission
and to be declared “incapable of serving the
King in any capacity,” but for some reason
or other the trooper never reported his
superior.
The humour and the honour of fighting are
by no means all on one side. A good many
years ago there was a war in New Zealand
THE VICTORIA CROSS
13
against the Maoris, who, though they
tortured prisoners and occasionally ate a
man, liked fighting for its own sake. One
of their chiefs cut off a detachment of our
men in a stockade where he might have
starved them out, and eaten them at leisure
later. But word reached him that they
were short of provisions, and so he sent in a
canoeful of pig and potatoes with the mes¬
sage that it was no fun to play that game with
weak men, and he would be happy to meet
them after rest and a full meal. There are
many cases in which men, very young as a
rule, have forced their way through a stock¬
ade of thorns that hook or bamboos that
cut and held on in the face of heavy fire
or just so long as served to bring up their
comrades. Those who have done this say
that getting in is exciting enough, but the
bad time, when the minutes drag like hours,
lies between the first scuffle with the angry
faces in the smoke, and the “Hi, get out o’
this!” that shows that the others of our side
are tumbling up behind. They say it is as
bad as football when you get off the ball
just as slowly as you dare, so that your own
side may have time to come up.
Most men, after they have been shot over
LAND AND SEA TALES
H
a little, only want a lead to do good work;
so the result of a young man’s daring is often
out of all proportion to his actual perform¬
ances.
Here is a case which never won notice
because very few people talked about it —
a case of the courage of Ulysses, one might
say.
A column of troops, heavily weighted with
sick and wounded, had drifted into a bad
place — a pass where an enemy, hidden be¬
hind rocks, were picking them off at known
ranges, as they retreated. Half a battalion
was acting as rear-guard — company after
company facing about on the narrow road
and trying to keep down the wicked, flicker¬
ing fire from the hillsides. And it was twi¬
light; and it was cold and raining; and it was
altogether horrible for everyone.
Presently, the rear-guard began to fire a
little too quickly and to hurry back to the
main body a little too soon, and the bearers
put down the ambulances a little too often,
and looked on each side of the road for
possible cover. Altogether, there were the
makings of a nasty little breakdown — and
after that would come primitive slaughter.
A boy whom I knew was acting command
THE VICTORIA CROSS
15
of one company that was specially bored
and sulky, and there were shouts from the
column of “Hurry up! Hurry there!”
neither necessary nor soothing. He kept his
men in hand as well as he could, hitting
down rifles when they fired wild, till some¬
one along the line shouted: “What on earth
are you fellows waiting so long for.?”
Then my friend — I am rather proud that
he was my friend — hunted for his pipe and
tobacco, filled the bowl in his pocket be¬
cause, he said afterwards, he didn’t want any
one to see how his hand shook, lit a fuzee,
and shouted back between very short puffs :
“ Hold on a minute. Fm lighting my pipe.”
There was a roar of rather crackly laugh¬
ter and the company joker said: “Since you
are so pressin’, I think Fll ’ave a draw
meself.”
I don’t believe either pipe was smoked
out, but — and this is a very big but — the
little bit of acting steadied the company,
and the news of it ran down the line, and
even the wounded in the doolies laughed,
and everyone felt better. Whether the
enemy heard the laughing, or was impressed
by the even “one-two-three-four” firing
that followed it, will never be known, but
i6 LAND AND SEA TALES
the column came to camp at the regulation
step and not at a run, with very few casual¬
ties. That is what one may call the courage
of the much-enduring Ulysses, but the only
comment that I ever heard on the affair was
the boy’s own, and all he said was: ‘‘It was
transpontine (which means theatrical), but
necessary.”
Of course he must have been a good boy
from the beginning, for little bits of pure in¬
spiration seldom come to or are acted upon by
slovens, self-indulgent or undisciplined peo¬
ple. I have not yet met one V. C. who had
not strict notions about washing and shav¬
ing and keeping himself decent on his way
through the civilized world, whatever he
may have done outside it.
Indeed, it is very curious, after one has
known hundreds of young men and young
officers, to sit still at a distance and watch
them come forward to success in their pro¬
fession. Somehow, the clean and consid¬
erate man mostly seems to take hold of
circumstances at the right end.
One of the youngest of the V. C.’s of his
time I used to know distantly as a beautiful
being whom they called Aide-de-Camp to a
big official in India. So far as strangers
THE VICTORIA CROSS
17
could judge, his duties consisted in wearing
a uniform faced with blue satin, and in
seeing that everyone was looked after at
the dances and dinners. He would wander
about smiling, with eyes at the back of his
head, introducing men who were strangers
and a little uncomfortable, to girls whose
dance-cards were rather empty; taking old
and uninteresting women into supper, and
tucking them into their carriages afterwards;
or pleasantly steering white-whiskered na¬
tive officers all covered with medals and
half-blind with confusion through the maze
of a big levee into the presence of the Vice¬
roy or Commander-in-Chief, or whoever it
was they were being presented to.
After a few years of this work, his chance
came, and he made the most of it. We
were then smoking out a nest of caravan-
raiders, slave-dealers, and general thieves
who lived somewhere under the Karakoram
Mountains among glaciers about sixteen
thousand feet above sea-level. The mere
road to the place was too much for many
mules, for it ran by precipices and round
rock-curves and over roaring, snow-fed
rivers.
The enemy — they were called Kanjuts —
i8 LAND AND SEA TALES
had fortified themselves in a place nearly as
impregnable as nature and man could make
it. One position was on the top of a cliff
about twelve hundred feet high, whence
they could roll stones directly on the head
of any attacking force. Our men objected
to the stones much more than to the rifle-
fire. They were camped in a river-bed at
the bottom of an icy pass with some three
tiers of these cliff-like defences above them,
and the Kanjuts on each tier were very well
armed. To make all specially pleasant, it
was December.
This ex-aide-de-camp happened to be a
good mountaineer, and he was told off with
a hundred native troops, Goorkhas and
Dogra Sikhs, to climb up into the top tier
of the fortifications. The only way of ar¬
riving was to follow a sort of shoot in the
cliff-face which the enemy had worn smooth
by throwing rocks down. Even in daylight,
in peace, and with good guides, it would
have been fair mountaineering.
He went up in the dark, by eye and guess,
against some two thousand Kanjuts very
much at war with him. When he had
climbed eight hundred feet almost per¬
pendicular he found he had to come back.
THE VICTORIA CROSS
19
because even he and his Goorkha cragsmen
could find no way.
He returned to the river-bed and tried
again in a new place, working his men up
between avalanches of stones that slid along
and knocked people over. When he strug¬
gled to the top he had to take his men into
the forts with the bayonet and the kukri,
the little Goorkha knife. The attack was
so utterly bold and unexpected that it broke
the hearts of the enemy and practically
ended the campaign; and if you could see
the photograph of the place you would
understand why.
It was hard toenail and fingernail crag¬
climbing under fire, and the men behind
him were not regulars, but what are called
Imperial Service troops — men raised by the
semi-independent kings and used to defend
the frontier. They enjoyed themselves im¬
mensely, and the little aide-de-camp got a
deserved Victoria Cross. The courage of
Ulysses again; for he had to think as he
climbed, and until he was directly under¬
neath the fortifications, one chance-hopping
boulder might just have planed his men off
all along the line.
But there is a heroism beyond all, for
20
LAND AND SEA TALES
which no Victoria Cross is ever given, be¬
cause there is no official enemy nor any
sort of firing, except one volley in the early
morning at some spot where the noise does
not echo into the newspapers.
It is necessary from time to time to send
unarmed men into No Man’s Land and the
Back of Beyond across the Khudajantakhan
(The Lord-knows-where) Mountains, just
to find out what is going on there among
people who some day or other may become
dangerous enemies.
The understanding is that if the men re¬
turn with their reports so much the better
for them. They may then receive some
sort of decoration, given, so far as the public
can make out, for no real reason. If they
do not come back, and people disappear very
mysteriously at the Back of Beyond, that
is their own concern and no questions will
be asked, and no enquiries made.
They tell a tale of one man who, some
years ago, strayed into No Man’s Land to
see how things were, and met a very amiable
set of people, who asked him to a round of
dinners and lunches and dances. And all
that time he knew, and they knew that he
knew, that his hosts were debating between
THE VICTORIA CROSS
21
themselves whether they should suffer him
to live till next morning, and if they de¬
cided not to let him live, in what way they
should wipe him out most quietly.
The only consideration that made them
hesitate was that they could not tell from
his manner whether there were five hundred
Englishmen within a few miles of him or no
Englishmen at all within five hundred miles
of him; and, as matters stood at that mo¬
ment, they could not very well go out to
look and make sure.
So he danced and dined with those pleas¬
ant, merry folk, — all good friends, — and
talked about hunting and shooting and so
forth, never knowing when the polite serv¬
ants behind his chair would turn into the
firing-party. At last his hosts decided,
without rude words said, to let him go; and
when they made up their minds they did
it very handsomely; for, you must remember,
there is no malice borne on either side of
that game.
They gave him a farewell banquet and
drank his health, and he thanked them for
his delightful visit, and they said: “So glad
you’re glad — au revoir^^ and he came away
looking a little bored.
22
LAND AND SEA TALES
Later on, so the tale runs, his hosts dis¬
covered that their guest had been given
up for lost by his friends in England where
no one ever expected to see him again.
Then they were sorry that they had not
put him against a wall and shot him.
That is a case of the cold-blooded courage
worked up to after years of training — cour¬
age of mind forcing the body through an
unpleasant situation for the sake of the
game.
When all is said and done, courage of
mind is the finest thing any one can hope to
attain to. A weak or undisciplined soul is
apt to become reckless under strain (which
is only being afraid the wrong way about),
or to act for its own immediate advantage.
For this reason the Victoria Cross is
jealously guarded, and if there be suspicion
that the man is playing to the gallery or out
pot-hunting for medals, as they call it, he
is often left to head his charges and rescue
his wounded all over again as a guarantee
of good faith.
In the Great War there was very little
suspicion, or chance, of gallery-play for the
V. C., because there was ample opportunity
and, very often, strong necessity, for a man
THE VICTORIA CROSS
23
to repeat his performances several times
over. Moreover, he was generally facing
much deadlier weapons than mere single
rifles or edged tools, and the rescue of
wounded under fire was, by so much, a more
serious business. But one or two War
V. C.’s of my acquaintance have told me
that if you can manage the little matter of
keeping your head, it is not as difficult as it
sounds to get on the blind side of a machine
gun, or to lie out under its lowest line of
fire where, they say, you are “quite com¬
fortable if you don’t fuss.” Also, every
V. C. of the Great War I have spoken to
has been rather careful to explain that he
won his Cross because what he did hap¬
pened to be done when and where someone
could notice it. Thousands of men they
said did just the same, but in places where
there were no observers. And that is true;
for the real spirit of the Army changes very
little through the years.
Men are taught to volunteer for anything
and everything; going out quietly after,
not before, the authorities have filled their
place. They are also instructed that it is
cowardly, it is childish, and it is cheating
to neglect or scamp the plain work im-
24
LAND AND SEA TALES
mediately in front of them, the duties they
are trusted to do, for the sake of stepping
aside to snatch at what to an outsider may
resemble fame or distinction. Above all,
their own hard equals, whose opinion is the
sole opinion worth having, are always sitting
unofficially in judgment on them.
The Order itself is a personal decoration,
and the honour and glory of it belongs to the
wearer; but he can only win it by forgetting
himself, his own honour and glory, and by
working for something beyond and outside
and apart from his own self. And there
seems to be no other way in which you get
anything in this world worth the keeping.
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK
«
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK
Almost every word of this story is based on fact. The
Boer W ar of i8gg—igo2 was a very small one as wars
were reckoned, and was fought without any particular
malice, but it taught our men the practical value of
scouting in the field. They were slow to learn at the
outset, and it cost them many unnecessary losses, as is
always the case when men think they can do their
work without taking trouble beforehand.
The guns of the Field-Battery were am¬
bushed behind white-thorned mimosas,
scarcely taller than their wheels, that marked
the line of a dry nullah; and the camp pre¬
tended to find shade under a clump of gums
planted as an experiment by some Minister
of Agriculture. One small hut, reddish
stone with a tin roof, stood where the single
track of the railway split into a siding. A
rolling plain of red earth, speckled with
loose stones and sugar-bush, ran northward
to the scarps and spurs of a range of little
hills — all barren and exaggerated in the
heat-haze. Southward, the level lost itself
in a tangle of scrub-furred hillocks, up-
28 LAND AND SEA TALES
heaved without purpose or order, seared and
blackened by the strokes of the careless
lightning, seamed down their sides with
spent watercourses, and peppered from base
to summit with stones — riven, piled, scat¬
tered stones. Far away, to the eastward,
a line of blue-grey mountains, peaked and
horned, lifted itself over the huddle of the
tortured earth. It was the only thing that
held steady through the liquid mirage. The
nearer hills detached themselves from the
plain, and swam forward like islands in
a milky ocean. While the Major stared
through puckered eyelids. Leviathan him¬
self waded through the far shallows of it —
a black and formless beast.
‘‘That,” said the Major, “must be the guns
coming back.” He had sent out two guns,
nominally for exercise — actually to show the
loyal Dutch that there was artillery near the
railway if any patriot thought fit to tam¬
per with it. Chocolate smears, looking as
though they had been swept with a besom
through the raffle of stones, wandered
across the earth — unbridged, ungraded, un-
metalled. They were the roads to the brown
mud huts, one in each valley, that were
officially styled farm-houses. At very long
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 29
intervals a dusty Cape-cart or a tilted wagon
would move along them, and men, dirtier
than the dirt, would come to sell fruit or
scraggy sheep. At night the farm-houses were
lighted up in a style out of all keeping with
Dutch economy; the scrub would light itself
on some far headland, and the house-lights
twinkled in reply. Three or four days later
the Major would read bad news in the Cape¬
town papers thrown to him from the passing
troop trains.
The guns and their escort changed from
Leviathan to the likeness of wrecked boats,
their crews struggling beside them. Pres¬
ently they took on their true shape, and
lurched into camp amid clouds of dust.
The Mounted Infantry escort set about
its evening meal; the hot air filled with the
scent of burning wood; sweating men,
rough-dried sweating horses with wisps of
precious forage; the sun dipped behind the
hills, and they heard the whistle of a train
from the south.
“What’s that?” said the Major, slipping
into his coat. The decencies had not yet left
him.
“Ambulance train,” said the Captain of
Mounted Infantry, raising his glasses. “ Td
30
LAND AND SEA TALES
like to talk to a woman again, but it won’t
stop here. ... It is stopping, though,
and making a beastly noise. Let’s look.”
The engine had sprung a leaky tube, and
ran lamely into the siding. It would be
two or three hours at least before she could
be patched up.
Two doctors and a couple of Nursing Sis¬
ters stood on the rear platform of a carriage.
The Major explained the situation, and in¬
vited them to tea.
‘‘We were just going to ask you” said the
medical Major of the ambulance train.
“No, come to our camp. Let the men
see a woman again!” he pleaded.
Sister Dorothy, old in the needs of war, for
all her twenty-four years, gathered up a tin
of biscuits and some bread and butter new
cut by the orderlies. Sister Margaret
picked up the tea-pot, the spirit-lamp, and
a water-bottle.
“Capetown water,” she said with a nod.
“Filtered too. / know Karroo water.”
She jumped down lightly on to the ballast.
“What do you know about the Karroo,
Sister?” said the Captain of Mounted In¬
fantry, indulgently, as a veteran of a
month’s standing. He understood that all
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 31
that desert as it seemed to him was called
by that name.
She laughed. “This is my home. I was
born out they-ah — ^just behind that big
range of hills — out Oudtshorn way. It’s only
sixty miles from here. Oh, how good it is !”
She slipped the Nurses’ cap from her
head, tossed it through the open car-window,
and drew a breath of deep content. With
the sinking of the sun the dry hills had
taken life and glowed against the green
of the horizon. They rose up like jewels in
the utterly clear air, while the valleys be¬
tween flooded with purple shadow. A mile
away, stark-clear, withered rocks showed as
though one could touch them with the hand,
and the voice of a native herdboy in charge
of a flock of sheep came in clear and sharp
over twice that distance. Sister Margaret
devoured the huge spaces with eyes unused
to shorter ranges, snuffed again the air that
has no equal under God’s skies, and turning
to her companion, said: — “What do you
think of it ?”
“I am afraid I’m rather singular,” he re¬
plied. “Most of us hate the Karroo. I
used to, but it grows on one somehow. I
suppose it’s the lack of fences and roads
32
LAND AND SEA TALES
that’s so fascinating. And when one gets
back from the railway - ”
“You’re quite right,” she said, with an
emphatic stamp of her foot. “ People come
to Matjesfontein — ugh! — with their lungs,
and they live opposite the railway station
and that new hotel, and they think that' s
the Karroo. They say there isn’t anything
in it. It’s full of life when you really get
into it. You see that.^ I’m so glad.
D’you know, you’re the first English officer
I’ve heard who has spoken a good word for
my country.?”
“I’m glad I pleased you,” said the Cap¬
tain, looking into Sister Margaret’s black-
lashed grey eyes under the heavy brown
hair shot with grey where it rolled back
from the tanned forehead. This kind of
nurse was new in his experience. The
average Sister did not lightly stride over
rolling stones, and — ^was it possible that her
easy pace up-hill was beginning to pump
him.? As she walked, she hummed joy¬
ously to herself, a queer catchy tune of one
line several times repeated: —
Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera,
Vat jou goet en trek.
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 33
It ran off with a little trill that sounded
like,
Zwaar draa, alle en de ein leant;
Jannie met de hoepel bein!^
“Listen!” she said, suddenly. “What
was that ?”
“It must be a wagon on the road. I
heard the whip, I think.”
“Yes, but you didn’t hear the wheels,
did you? It’s a little bird that makes just
that noise ‘Whe-ew’!” she duplicated it
perfectly. “We call it” — she gave the
Dutch name, which did not, of course, abide
with the Captain. “We must have given
him a scare! You hear him in the early
mornings when you are sleeping in the
wagons. It’s just like the noise of a whip¬
lash, isn’t it?”
They entered the Major’s tent a little be¬
hind the others, who were discussing the
scanty news of the Campaign.
“Oh, no,” said Sister Margaret coolly,
bending over the spirit-lamp, “the Trans-
vaalers will stay round Kimberley and try
^ Pack your kit and trek, Ferriera,
Pack your kit and trek.
A long pull, all on one side,
Johnnie with the lame leg.
34
LAND AND SEA TALES
to put Rhodes in a cage. But, of course, if
a commando gets through to De Aar they
will all rise -
‘‘You think so. Sister.?” said the medical
Major, deferentially.
“I know so. They will rise anywhere in
the Colony if a commando comes actually
to them. Presently they will rise in Prieska
— if it is only to steal the forage at Van
Wyk’sVlei. Why not.?”
“We get most of our opinions of the war
from Sister Margaret,” said the civilian
doctor of the train. “It’s all new to me,
but, so far, all her prophecies have come
true.
A few months ago that doctor had retired
from practice to a country house in rainy
England, his fortune made and, as he tried
to believe, his life-work done. Then the
bugles blew, and, rejoicing at the change, he
found himself, his experience, and his fine
bedside manner, buttoned up in a black-
tabbed khaki coat, on a hospital train that
covered eleven hundred miles a week, car¬
ried a hundred wounded each trip and
dealt him more experience in a month than
he had ever gained in a year of home
practice.
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 35
Sister Margaret and the Captain of
Mounted Infantry took their cups outside
the tent. The Captain wished to know
something more about her. Till that day
he had believed South Africa to be populated
by sullen Dutchmen and slack-waisted
women; and in some clumsy fashion be¬
trayed the belief.
“Of course, you don’t see any others
where you are,” said Sister Margaret,
leniently, from her camp-chair. “They
are all at the war. I have two brothers, and
a nephew, my sister’s son, and — oh, I can’t
count my cousins.” She flung her hands
outward with a curiously un-English gesture.
“And then, too, you have never been off the
railway. You have only seen Capetown?
All the schel — all the useless people are
there. You should see our country be¬
yond the ranges — out Oudtshorn way. We
grow fruit and vines. It is much prettier,
/ think, than Paarl.”
“I’d like to very much. I may be sta¬
tioned in Africa after the war is over.”
“Ah, but we know the English officers.
They say that this is a ‘beastly country,’
and they do not know how to — to be nice to
people. Shall I tell you? There was an
36 LAND AND SEA TALES
aide-de-camp at Government House three
years ago. He sent out invitations to din¬
ner to Piet — to Mr. Van der Hooven’s wife.
And she had been dead eight years, and Van
der Hooven — he has the big farms round
Craddock — just then was thinking of chang¬
ing his politics, you see — he was against the
Government, — and taking a house in Cape¬
town, because of the Army meat contracts.
That was why, you see?”
“I see,” said the Captain, to whom this
was all Greek.
Piet was a little angry — not much — but
he went to Capetown, and that aide-de-
camp had made a joke about it — about in¬
viting the dead woman — in the Civil Service
Club. You see? So of course the opposi¬
tion there told Van der Hooven that the
aide-de-camp had said he could not re¬
member all the old Dutch vrows that had
died, and so Piet Van der Hooven went
away angry, and now he is more hot than
ever against the Government. If you stay
with us you must not be like that. You see ?”
‘H won’t,” said the Captain, seriously.
‘‘What a night it is. Sister!” He dwelt
lovingly on the last word, as men did in
South Africa.
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 37
The soft darkness had shut upon them
unawares and the world had vanished.
There was not so much breeze as a slow
motion of the whole dry air under the vault
of the immeasurably deep heavens. “Look
up/’ said the Captain; “doesn’t it make you
feel as if we were tumbling down into the
stars — all upside down?”
“Yes,” said Sister Margaret, tilting her
head back. “It is always like that. I
know. And those are our stars.”
They burned with a great glory, large as
the eyes of cattle by lamp-light; planet after
planet of the mild Southern sky. As the
Captain said, one seemed to be falling from
out the hidden earth sheer through space,
between them.
“Now, when I was little,” Sister Mar¬
garet began very softly, “there was one
day in the week at home that was all our
own. We could get up as soon as we liked
after midnight, and there was the basket in
the kitchen — our food. We used to go out
at three o’clock sometimes, my two brothers,
my sisters, and the two little ones — out
into the Karroo for all the day. All — the
— long — day. First we built a fire, and
then we made a kraal for the two little ones
38 LAND AND SEA TALES
— a kraal of thorn bushes so that they should
not be bitten by anything. You see.^
Often we made the kraal before morning —
when those” — she jerked her firm chin at
the stars — ‘‘were just going out. Then we
old ones went hunting lizards — and snakes
and birds and centipedes, and all that sort
of nice thing. Our father collected them.
He gave us half-a-crown for a spuugh-
slange — a kind of snake. You see.^” !
“How old were you.?” Snake-hunting
did not strike the Captain as a safe amuse¬
ment for the young.
“I was eleven then — or ten, perhaps, and
the little ones were two and three. Why?
Then we came back to eat, and we sat under
a ;pock all afternoon. It was hot, you see,
and we played — we played with the stones
and the flowers. You should see our Karroo
in spring! All flowers! All our flowers!
Then we came home, carrying the little ones
on our backs asleep — came home through
the dark — just like this night. That was
our own day! Oh, the good days! We
used to watch the meer-cats playing, too,
and the little buck. When I was at Guy’s,
learning to nurse how home-sick that made
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 39
'‘But what a splendid open-air life!” said
the Captain.
“Where else is there to live except the
open air.?” said Sister Margaret, looking off
into twenty thousand square miles of it with
eyes that burned.
“You’re quite right.”
“Em sorry to interrupt you two,” said
Sister Dorothy, who had been talking to the
gunner Major; “but the guard says we shall
be ready to go in a few minutes. Major
Devine and Dr. Johnson have gone down
already.”
“Very good. Sister. We’ll follow.” The
Captain rose unwillingly and made for the
worn path from the camp to the rail.
“Isn’t there another way.?” said Sister
Margaret. Her grey nursing gown glim¬
mered like some big moth’s wing.
“No. I’ll bring a lantern. It’s quite
safe.”
“I did not think of that,^' she said with a
laugh; “only we never come home by the
way we left it when we live in the Karroo.
If any one — suppose you had dismissed a
Kaffir, or got him sjamboked,^ and he saw
you go out .? He would wait for you to come
^Beaten.
40
LAND AND SEA TALES
back on a tired horse, and then. . . .
You see ? But, of course, in England where
the road is all walled, it is different. How
funny ! Even when we were little we learned
never to come home the way we went out.’’
‘‘Very good,” said the Captain, obedi¬
ently. It made the walk longer, and he
approved of that.
“That’s a curious sort of woman,” said
the Captain to the Major, as they smoked a
lonely pipe together when the train had
gone.
“ You seemed to think so.”
“Well — I couldn’t monopolize Sister Dor¬
othy in the presence of my senior officer.
What was she like.^”
“Oh, it came out that she knew a lot of
my people in London. She’s the daughter
of a chap in the next county to us, too.”
* * * *
The General’s flag still flew before his un¬
struck tent to amuse Boer binoculars, and
loyal lying correspondents still telegraphed
accounts of his daily work. But the Gen¬
eral himself had gone to join an army a
hundred miles away; drawing off from time
to time every squadron, gun and company
that he dared. His last words to the few
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 41
troops he left behind covered the entire
situation.
“If you can bluff ’em till we get round up
north to tread on their tails, it’s all right.
If you can’t, they’ll probably eat you up.
Hold ’em as long as you can.”
So the skeleton remnant of the brigade
lay close among the kopjes till the Boers,
not seeing them in force on the sky-line,
feared that they might have learned the
rudiments of war. They rarely disclosed a
gun, for the reason that they had so few;
they scouted by fours and fives instead of
clattering troops and chattering companies,
and where they saw a too obvious way
opened to attack they, lacking force to
drive it home, looked elsewhere. Great
was the anger in the Boer commando across
the river — the anger and unease.
“The reason is they have so few men,”
the loyal farmers reported, all fresh from
selling melons to the camp, and drinking
Queen Victoria’s health in good whisky.
“They have no horses — only what they call
Mounted Infantry. They are afraid of us.
They try to make us friends by giving us
brandy. Come on and shoot them. Then
you will see us rise and cut the line.”
42
LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Yes, we know how you rise, you Colon¬
ials,” said the Boer commandant above his
pipe. “We know what has come to all your
promises from Beaufort West, and even
from De Aar. We do the work — all the
work,' — and you kneel down with your
parsons and pray for our success. What
good is that ? The President has told you a
hundred times God is on our side. Why do
you worry Him.^ We did not send you
Mausers and ammunition for that.”
“We kept our commando-horses ready
for six months — and forage is very dear.
We sent all our young men,” said an hon¬
oured member of local society.
“A few here and a few servants there.
What is that.^ You should have risen down
to the sea all together.”
“But you were so quick. Why did not
you wait the year.? We were not ready,
Jan.”
“That is a lie. All you Cape people lie.
You want to save your cattle and your
farms. Wait till our flag flies from here
to Port Elizabeth and you shall see what you
will save when the President learns how you
have risen — you clever Cape people.”
The saddle-coloured sons of the soil looked
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 43
down their noses. "lYes — it is true. Some
of our farms are close to the line. They say
at Worcester and in the Paarl that many
soldiers are always coming in from the sea.
One must think of that — at least till they
are shot. But we know there are very few
in front of you here. Give them what you
gave the fools at Stormberg, and you will
see how we can shoot rooineks.”^
“Yes. I know that cow. She is always
going to calve. Get away. I am answer-
able to the President — not to the Cape.’’
But the information stayed in his mind,
and, not being a student of military works,
he made a plan to suit. The tall kopje on
which the English had planted their helio¬
station commanded the more or less open
plain to the northward, but did not com¬
mand the five-mile belt of broken country
between that and the outmost English
pickets, some three miles from camp. The
Boers had established themselves very com¬
fortably among these rock-ridges and scrub-
patches, and the “great war” drizzled down
to long shots and longer stalking. The
young bloods wanted rooineks to shoot, and
said so.
^Red necks — English soldiers.
44
LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘See here,” quoth the experienced Jan
van Staden that evening to as many of his
commando as cared to listen. “You young¬
sters from the Colony talk a lot. Go and
turn the rooineks out of their kopjes to¬
night. Eh? Go and take their bayonets
from them and stick them into them. Eh?
You don’t go!” He laughed at the silence
round the fire.
“Jan — ^Jan,” said one young man ap¬
pealingly, “don’t make mock of us.”
“I thought that was what you wanted so
badly. No? Then listen to me. Behind
us the grazing is bad. We have too many
cattle here.” (They had been stolen from
farmers who had been heard to express fears
of defeat.) “To-morrow, by the sky’s look,
it will blow a good wind. So, to-morrow
early I shall send all our cattle north to the
new grazing. That will make a great dust
for the English to see from their helio
yonder.” He pointed to a winking night-
lamp stabbing the darkness with orders
to an out-lying picket. “With the cattle
we will send all our women. Yes, all the
women and the wagons we can spare, and
the lame ponies and the broken carts we
took from Andersen’s farm. That will
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 45
make a big dust — the dust of our retreat.
Do you see?’’
They saw and approved, and said so.
‘‘Good. There are many men here who
want to go home to their wives. I shall let
thirty of them away for a week. Men who
wish to do this will speak to me to-night.”
(This meant that Jan needed money, and
furlough would be granted on strictly busi¬
ness lines.) “These men will look after the
cattle and see that they make a great dust
for a long way. They will run about behind
the cattle showing their guns, too. So that^
if the wind blows well, will be our retreat.
The cattle will feed beyond Koopman’s
Kop.”
“No good water there,” growled a farmer
who knew that section. “Better go on to
Zwartpan. It is always sweet at Zwart-
pan.”
The commando discussed the point for
twenty minutes. It was much more serious
than shooting rooineks. Then Jan went on :
“When the rooineks see our retreat they
may all come into our kopjes together. If
so, good. But it is tempting God to expect
such a favour. / think they will first send
some men to scout.” He grinned broadly.
46 LAND AND SEA TALES
using the English word. ^'Almighty! To
scoot ! They have none of that new sort of
rooinek that they used at Sunnyside.’’ (Jan
meant an incomprehensible animal from a
place called Australia across the Southern
seas who played what they knew of the war-
game to kill.) “They have only some
Mounted Infantry,” — again he used the
English words. “They were once a Red-
jacket regiment, so their scoots will stand
up bravely to be shot at.”
“Good — good, we will shoot them,” said
a youngster from Stellenbosch, who had
come up on free pass as a Capetown excur¬
sionist just before the war to a farm on the
border, where his aunt was taking care of his
horse and rifle.
“But if you shoot their scoots I will
sjambok you myself,” said Jan, amid roars
of laughter. “We must let them all come
into the kopjes to look for us; and I pray
God will not allow any of us to be tempted
to shoot them. They will cross the ford in
front of their camp. They will come along
the road — so!” He imitated with ponder¬
ous arms the Army style of riding. “They
will trot up the road this way and that way”
— here he snaked his hard finger in the dust
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 47
— ‘‘between kopjes, till they come here,
where they can see the plain and all our
cattle going away. Then they will all come
in close together. Perhaps they will even
fix their bayonets. We shall be up here
behind the rock — there and there.” He
pointed to two flat-topped kopjes, one on
either side of the road, some eight hundred
yards away. “That is our place. We will
go there before sunrise. Remember we
must be careful to let the very last of the
rooineks pass before we begin shooting.
They will come along a little careful at first.
But we do not shoot. Then they will see
our fires and the fresh horse-dung, so they
will know we have gone on. They will run
together and talk and point and shout in
this nice open place. Then we begin shoot¬
ing them from above.”
“Yes, uncle, but if the scouts see nothing
and there are no shots and we let them go
back quite quiet, they will think it was a
trick. Perhaps the main body may never
come here at all. Even rooineks learn in
time — and so we may lose even the scouts.”
“I have thought of that too,” said Jan,
with slow contempt, as the Stellenbosch boy
delivered his shot. “If you had been my
48 LAND AND SEA TALES
son I should have sjamboked you more when
you were a youngster. I shall put you and
four or five more on the Nek [the pass],
where the road comes from their camp into
these kopjes. You go there before it is
light. Let the scoots pass in or I will
sjambok you myself. When the scoots
come back after seeing nothing here, then
you may shoot them, but not till they have
passed the Nek and are on the straight road
to their camp again. Do you understand?
Repeat what I have said, so that I shall
know.”
The youth obediently repeated his orders.
‘‘ Kill their officers if you can. If not, no
great matter, because the scoots will run to
camp with the news that our kopjes are
empty. Their helio-station will see your
party trying to hold the’Nek so hard — and
all that time they will see our dust out yon¬
der, and they will think you are the rear¬
guard, and they will think we are escaping.
They will be angry.”
“Yes — yes, uncle, we see,” from a dozen
elderly voices.
“But this calf does not. Be silent!
They will shoot at you, Niclaus, on the Nek,
because they will think you are to cover our
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 49
getting away. They will shell the Nek.
They will miss. You will then ride away.
All the rooineks will come after you, hot and
in a hurry — perhaps, even, with their can¬
non. They will pass our fires and our
fresh horse-dung. They will come here
as their scoots came. They will see the
plain so full of our dust. They will say,
‘The scoots spoke truth. It is a full re¬
treat. ’ Then we up there on the rocks will
shoot, and it will be like the fight at Storm-
berg in daytime. Do you understand now?**
Those of the commando directly in¬
terested lit new pipes and discussed the
matter in detail till midnight.
Next morning the opeiations began with,
if one may borrow the language of some
official despatches — “the precision of well-
oiled machinery.”
The helio-station reported the dust of the
wagons and the movements of armed men
in full flight across the plain beyond the
kopjes. A Colonel, newly appointed from
England, by reason of his seniority, sent
forth a dozen Mounted Infantry under com¬
mand of a Captain. Till a month ago they
had been drilled by a cavalry instructor, who
taught them “shock” tactics to the music
LAND AND SEA TALES
SO
of trumpets. They knew how to advance
in echelon of squadrons, by cat’s cradle of
troops, in quarter column of stable-litter,
how to trot, to gallop, and above all to
charge. They knew how to sit their horses
unremittingly, so that at the day’s end they
might boast how many hours they had been
in the saddle without relief, and they learned
to rejoice in the clatter and stamp of a troop
moving as such, and therefore audible five
miles away.
They trotted out two and two along the
farm road, that trailed lazily through the
wind-driven dust; across the half-dried ford
to a nek between low stony hills leading
into the debatable land. (Vrooman of
Emmaus from his neatly bushed hole noted
that one man carried a sporting Lee-
Enfield rifle with a short fore-end. Vroo¬
man of Emmaus argued that the owner of it
was the officer to be killed on his return, and
went to sleep.) They saw nothing except
a small flock of sheep and a Kaffir herds¬
man who spoke broken English with curious
fluency. He had heard that the Boers had
decided to retreat on account of their sick
and wounded. The Captain in charge of
the detachment turned to look at the helio-
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 51
station four miles away. ‘'Hurry up/’
said the dazzling flash. “Retreat appar¬
ently continues, but suggest you make
sure. Quick.”
“Ye-es,” said the Captain, a shade bit¬
terly, as he wiped the sweat from a sun¬
skinned nose. “You want me to come back
and report all clear. If anything happens
it will be my fault. If they get away it will
be my fault for disregarding the signal. I
love officers who suggest and advise, and
want to make their reputations in twenty
minutes.”
“’Don’t see much ’ere, sir,” said the ser¬
geant, scanning the bare cup of the hollow
where a dust-devil danced alone.
“No? We’ll go on.”
“If we get among these steep ’ills we lose
touch of the ’elio.”
“Very likely. Trot.”
The rounded mounds grew to spiked
kopjes, heart-breaking to climb under a hot
sun at four thousand feet above sea level.
This is where the scouts found their spurs
peculiarly useful.
Jan van Staden had thoughtfully allowed
the invading force a front of two rifle-shots
or four thousand yards, and they kept a
LAND AND SEA TALES
S2
thousand yards within his estimate. Ten
men strung over two miles feel that they
have explored all the round earth.
They saw stony slopes combing over in
scrub, narrow valleys clothed with stone,
low ridges of splintered stone, and tufts of
brittle-stemmed bush. An irritating wind,
split up by many rocky barriers, cuffed them
over the ears and slapped them in the face
at every turn. They came upon an aban¬
doned camp fire, a little fresh horse-dung,
and an empty ammunition-box splintered
up for fire-wood, an old boot, and a stale
bandage.
A few hundred yards farther along the
road a battered Mauser had been thrown
into a bush. The glimmer of its barrel drew
the scouts from the hillside, and here the
road after passing between two flat-topped
kopjes entered a valley nearly half a mile
wide, rose slightly, and over the nek of a
ridge gave clear view across the windy plain
northward.
^‘They’re on the dead run, for sure,’^
said a trooper. ‘‘Here’s their fire and their
litter and their guns, and that’s where
they’re bolting to.” He pointed over the
ridge to the bellying dust cloud a mile long.
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 53
A vulture high overhead flickered down,
steadied herself, and hung motionless.
“See!’’ said Jan van Staden from the
rocks above the road, to his waiting com¬
mando. “It turns like a well-oiled wheel.
They look where they need not look, but
hercy where they should look on both sides,
they look at our retreat — straight before
them. It is tempting our people too much.
I pray God no one will shoot them.”
“That’s about the size of it,” said the
Captain, rubbing the dust from his binocu¬
lars. “Boers on the run. I expect they
find their main line of retreat to the north is
threatened. We’ll get back and tell the
camp.” He wheeled his pony and his eye*
traversed the flat-topped kopje commanding'
the road. The stones at its edge seemed to
be piled with less than Nature’s carelessness.
“That ’ud be a dashed ugly place if it
were occupied — and that other one, too.
Those rocks aren’t five hundred yards from
the road, either of ’em. Hold on, sergeant,
I’ll light a pipe.” He bent over the bowl,
and above his lighted match squinted at
the kopje. A stone, a small roundish brown
boulder on the lip of another one, seemed to
move very slightly. The short hairs of his.
54 LAND AND SEA TALES
neck grated his collar. ‘‘Ell have another
squint at their retreat/’ he cried to the ser¬
geant, astonished at the steadiness of his
own voice. He swept the plain, and, wheel¬
ing, let the glass rest for a moment on the
kopje’s top. One cranny between the
rocks was pinkish, where blue sky should
have shown. His men, dotted down the
valley, sat heavily on their horses — it never
occurred to them to dismount. He could
hear the squeak of the leathers as a man
shifted. An impatient gust blew through
the valley and rattled the bushes. On all
sides the expectant hills stood still under the
pale blue.
‘‘And we passed within a quarter of a mile
of ’em! We’re done!” The thumping
heart slowed down, and the Captain began
to think clearly — so clearly that the
thoughts seemed solid things. “It’s Pre¬
toria gaol for us all. Perhaps that man’s
only a look-out, though. We’ll have to
bolt! And I led ’em into it ! . . . You
fool,” said his other self, above the beat of
the blood in his eardrums. “If they could
snipe you all from up there, why haven’t
they begun already.^ Because you’re the
bait for the rest of the attack. They don’t
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 55
want you now. You’re to go back and
bring up the others to be killed. Go back!
Don’t detach a man or they’ll suspect.
Go back all together. Tell the sergeant
you’re going. Some of them up there will
understand English. Tell it aloud! Then
back you go with the news — the real news.”
‘‘The country’s all clear, sergeant,” he
shouted. “We’ll go back and tell the
Colonel.” With an idiotic giggle he added,
“ It’s a good road for guns, don’t you think
“Hear you that.?” said Jan van Staden,
gripping a burgher’s arm. “God is on our
side to-day. They will bring their little
cannons after all !”
“Go easy. No good bucketing the
horses to pieces. We’ll need ’em for the
pursuit later,” said the Captain. “Hullo,
there’s a vulture ! How far would you make
him.?”
“Can’t tell, sir, in this dry air.”
The bird swooped towards the second
flat-topped kopje, but suddenly shivered
sideways, and wheeled off again, followed
intently by the Captain’s glance.
“And that kopje’s simply full of ’em, too,”
he said, flushing. “ Perfectly confident they
are, that we’d take this road — and then
56 LAND AND SEA TALES
they’ll scupper the whole boiling of us!
They’ll let us through to fetch up the others.
But I mustn’t let ’em know we know. By
Jove, they do not think much of us! ’Don’t
blame ’em.”
The cunning of the trap did not impress
him until later.
Down the track jolted a dozen well-
equipped men, laughing and talking — a
mark to make a pious burgher’s mouth
water. Thrice had their Captain explicitly
said that they were to march easy, so a
trooper began to hum a tune that he had
picked up in Capetown streets: —
Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera,
Vat jou goet en trek;
Jannie met de hoepel bein, Ferriera,
Jannie met de hoepel bein!
Then with a whistle: —
Zwaar draa — alle en de ein kant —
The Captain, thinking furiously, found his
mind turn to a camp in the Karroo, months
before; an engine that had halted in that
waste, and a woman with brown hair, early
grizzled — an extraordinary woman. . . .
Yes, but as soon as they had dropped the
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 57
flat-topped kopje behind its neighbour he
must hurry back and report ... A
woman with grey eyes and black eyelashes
. . . The Boers would probably be
massed on those two kopjes. How soon
dare he break into a canter.? ... A
woman with a queer cadence in her speech.
. . . It was not more than five miles
home by the straight road —
Even when we were children we learned
not to go hack by the way we had come”
The sentence came back to him, self-
shouted, so clearly that he almost turned to
see if the scouts had heard. The two flat-
topped kopjes behind him were covered by
a long ridge. The camp lay due south.
He had only to follow the road to the Nek —
a notch, unscouted as he recalled now, be¬
tween the two hills.
He wheeled his men up a long valley.
“ Excuse me, sir, that ain’t our road !” said
the sergeant. “Once we get over this rise,
straight on, we come into direct touch with
the ’elio, on that flat bit o’ road there they
^elioed us goin’ out.”
“ But we aren’t going to get in touch with
them just now. Come along, and come
quick.”
S8 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘What’s the meaning of this?” said a
private in the rear. “What’s ’e doin’ this
detour for? We sha’n’t get in for hours an’
hours.”
“Come on, men. Flog a canter out of
your brutes, somehow,” the Captain called
back.
For two throat-parched hours he held west
by south, away from the Nek, puzzling over
a compass already demented by the iron¬
stone in the hills, and then turned southeast
through an eruption of low hills that ran
far into the re-entering bend of the river
that circled the left bank of the camp.
Eight miles to eastward that student from
Stellenbosch had wriggled out on the rocks
above the Nek to have a word with Vrooman
of Emmaus. The bottom seemed to have
dropped out of at least one portion of their
programme; for the scouting party were not
to be seen.
“Jan is a clever man,” he said to his com¬
panion, “but he does not think that even
rooineks may learn. Perhaps those scouts
will have seen Jan’s commando, and per¬
haps they will come back to warn the
rooineks. That is why I think he should
have shot them before they came to the Nek,
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 59
and made quite sure that only one or two got
away. It would have made the English
angry, and they would have come out across
the open in hundreds to be shot. Then
when we ran away they would have come
after us without thinking. If you can make
the English hurry, they never think. Jan
is wrong this time.”
‘‘ Lie down, and pray you have not shown
yourself to their helio-station,” growled
Vrooman of Emmaus. “You throw with
your arms and kick with your legs like a
rooinek. When we get back I will tell Jan
and he will sjambok you. All will yet come
right. They will go and warn the rest, and
the rest will hurry out by this very nek.
Then we can shoot. Now you lie still and
wait.
“’Ere’s a rummy picnic. We left camp,
as it were, by the front door. ’E ^as given
us a giddy-go-round, an’ no mistake,” said
a dripping private as he dismounted behind
the infantry lines.
“Did you see our helio?” This was the
Colonel, hot from racing down from the
helio-station. “There were a lot of Boers
waiting for you on the Nek. We saw ’em.
We tried to get at you with the helio, and
LAND AND SEA TALES
^^60
tell you we were coming out to help you.
Then we saw you didn’t come over that flat
bit of road where we had signalled you going
out, and we wondered why. We didn’t hear
any shots.”
“I turned off, sir, and came in by another
road,” said the Captain.
‘^By another road!” The Colonel lifted
his eyebrows. ‘‘Perhaps you’re not aware,
sir, that the Boers have been in full retreat
for the last three hours, and that those men
on the Nek were simply a rear-guard put out
to delay us for a little. We could see that
much from here. Your duty, sir, was to
have taken them in the rear, and then we
could have brushed them aside. The Boer
retreat has been going on all morning, sir —
all morning. You were despatched to see
the front clear and to return at once. The
whole camp has been under arms for three
hours; and instead of doing your work you
wander all about Africa with your scouts to
avoid a handful of skulking Boers! You
should have sent a man back at once — you
should have - ”
The Captain got off his horse stiffly.
“As a matter of fact,” said he, “I didn’t
know for sure that there were any Boers on
THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 6i
the Nek, but I went round it in ca^se it was so.
But I do know that the kopjes beyond the
Nek are simply crawling with Boers.’’
“Nonsense. We can see the whole lot of
’em retreating out yonder.”
“Of course you can. That’s part of their
game, sir. I saw ’em lying on the top of
a couple of kopjes commanding the road,
where it goes into the plain on the far side.
They let us come in to see, and they let us
go out to report the country clear and bring
you up. Now they are waiting for you.
The whole thing is a trap.”
“D’you expect any officer of my experi¬
ence to believe that.^”
“As you please, sir,” said the Captain
hopelessly. “My responsibility ends with
my report.”
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT
':,4
’' ')>y ■'/- 'i‘
’^» t r ' '4 .'’ ^ '
»
no
#
}
^ ■ *
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT
This tale is founded on something that happened a
good many years ago in the Port of Calcutta^ before
wireless telegraphy was used on shipSy and men and
boys were less easy to catch when once they were in a
ship. It is not meant to show that anybody who thinks
he would like to become eminent in his business can do
so at a moment^ s notice; but it proves the old saying
that if you want anything badly enough and are willing
to pay the price for it, you generally get it. If you
dont get what you want it is a sign either that you did
not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over
the price.
Almost any pilot win tell you that his
. work is much more difficult than you
imagine; but the Pilots of the Hugh know
that they have one hundred miles of the
most dangerous river on earth running
through their hands — the Hugh between
Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal — and they
say nothing. Their service is picked and
sifted as carefully as the bench of the Su¬
preme Court, for a judge can only hang the
wrong man, or pass a bad law; but a care¬
less pilot can lose a ten-thousand-ton ship
66
LAND AND SEA TALES
with crew and cargo in less time than it
takes to reverse her engines.
There is very little chance of anything
getting off again when once she touches in
the furious Hugh current, loaded with all
the fat silt of the fields of Bengal, where the
soundings change two feet between tides,
and new channels make and unmake them¬
selves in one rainy season. Men have
fought the Hugh for two hundred years,
till now the river owns a huge building,
with drawing, survey, and telegraph de¬
partments, devoted to its private service, as
well as a body of wardens, who are called
the Port Commissioners.
They and their officers govern everything
that floats from the Hugli Bridge to the last
buoy at Pilots Ridge, one hundred and forty
miles away, far out in the Bay of Bengal,
where the steamers first pick up the pilots
from the pilot brig.
A Hugli pilot does not kindly bring papers
aboard for the passengers, or scramble up
the ship’s side by wet, swaying rope-ladders.
He arrives in his best clothes, with a native
servant or an assistant pilot to wait on him,
and he behaves as a man should who can
earn two or three thousand pounds a year
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 67
after twenty years’ apprenticeship. He has
beautiful rooms in the Port Office at Cal¬
cutta, and generally keeps himself to the
society of his own profession, for though the
telegraph reports the more important sound¬
ings of the river daily, there is much to be
learned from brother pilots between each
trip.
Some million tons of shipping must find
their way to and from Calcutta each twelve-
month, and unless the Hugh were watched
as closely as his keeper watches an elephant,
there is a fear that it might silt up, as it
has silted up round the old Dutch and
Portuguese ports twenty and thirty miles
behind Calcutta.
So the Port Office sounds and scours and
dredges the river, and builds spurs and
devices for coaxing currents, and labels all
the buoys with their proper letters, and at¬
tends to the semaphores and the lights and
the drum, ball and cone storm signals; and
the pilots of the Hugh do the rest; but, in
spite of all care and the very best attention,
the Hugh swallows her ship or two every
year. Even the coming of wireless teleg¬
raphy does not spoil her appetite.
When Martin Trevor had waited on the
68
LAND AND SEA TALES
river from his boyhood; when he had risen
to be a Senior Pilot entitled to bring up to
Calcutta the very biggest ships; when he had
thought and talked of nothing but Hugh
pilotage all his life to nobody except Hugh
pilots, he was exceedingly surprised and
indignant that his only son should decide
to follow his father’s profession. Mrs.
Trevor had died when the boy was a child,
and as he grew older, Trevor, in the inter¬
vals of his business, noticed that the lad
was very often by the river-side — no place,
he said, for a nice boy. But, as he was not
often at home, and as the aunt who looked
after Jim naturally could not follow him to
his chosen haunts, and as Jim had not the
faintest intention of giving up old friends
there, nothing but ineffectual growls came
of the remark. Later, when Trevor once
asked him if he could make anything out
of the shipping on the water, Jim replied by
reeling off the list of all the house-flags in
sight at the moorings, together with supple¬
mentary information about their tonnage
and captains.
‘‘You’ll come to a bad end, Jim,” said
Trevor. “Boys of your age haven’t any
business to waste their time on these things.”
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 69
‘‘Oh, Pedro at the Sailors’ Home says you
can’t begin too early.”
“At what, please.^”
“Piloting. I’m nearly fourteen now, and
— and I know where most of the shipping
in the river is, and I know what there was
yesterday over the Mayapur Bar, and I’ve
been down to Diamond Harbour — oh, a
hundred times already, and I’ve - ”
“You’ll go to school, son, and learn what
they teach you, and you’ll turn out some¬
thing better than a pilot,” said his father,
who wanted Jim to enter the Subordinate
Civil Service, but he might just as well have
told a shovel-nosed porpoise of the river to
come ashore and begin life as a hen. Jim
held his tongue; he noticed that all the best
pilots in the Port Office did that; and de¬
voted his young attention and all his spare
time to the river he loved. He had seen
the nice young gentlemen in the Subordi¬
nate Civil Service, and he called them a rude
native name for “clerks.”
He became as well known as the Banks-
hall itself; and the Port Police let him
inspect their launches, and the tug-boat
captains had always a place for him at their
tables, and the mates of the big steam
70
LAND AND SEA TALES
dredgers used to show him how the machin¬
ery worked, and there were certain native
row-boats which Jim practically owned; and
he extended his patronage to the railway
that runs to Diamond Harbour, forty miles
down the river. In the old days nearly all
the East India Company’s ships used to
discharge at Diamond Harbour, on account
of the shoals above, but now ships go straight
up to Calcutta, and they have only some
moorings for vessels in distress there, and a
telegraph service, and a harbour-master, who
was one of Jim’s most intimate friends.
He would sit in the Office listening to
the soundings of the shoals as they were
reported every day, and attending to the
movements of the steamers up and down
(Jim always felt he had lost something ir¬
retrievable if a boat got in or out of the
river without his knowing of it), and when
the big liners with their rows of blazing
portholes tied up in Diamond Harbour for
the night, Jim would row from one ship to
the other through the sticky hot air and the
buzzing mosquitoes and listen respectfully
as the pilots conferred together about the
habits of steamers.
Once, for a treat, his father took him down
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 71
clear out to the Sandheads and the pilot brig
there, and Jim was happily sea-sick as she
tossed and pitched in the Bay. The cream
of life, though, was coming up in a tug or a
police boat from Diamond Harbour to Cal¬
cutta, over the “James and Mary,” those
terrible sands christened after a royal ship
that they sunk two hundred years before.
They are made by two rivers that enter the
Hugh six miles apart and throw their own
silt across the silt of the main stream, so
that with each turn of weather and tide
the sands shift and change under water like
clouds in the sky. It was here (the tales
sound much worse when they are told in
the rush and growl of the muddy waters)
that the Countess of Stirling, fifteen hundred
tons, touched and capsized in ten minutes,
and a two-thousand-ton steamer in two,
and a pilgrim ship in five, and another
steamer literally in one instant, holding
down her men with the masts and shrouds
as she lashed over. When a ship touches on
the “James and Mary,” the river knocks
her down and buries her, and the sands
quiver all around her and reach out under
water and take new shapes over the corpse.
Young Jim would lie up in the bows of the
72
LAND AND SEA TALES
tug and watch the straining buoys kick and
choke in the coffee-coloured current, while
the semaphores and flags signalled from the
bank how much water there was in the
channel, till he learned that men who deal
with men can afford to be careless, on the
chance of their fellows being like them; but
men who deal with things dare not relax for
an instant. ‘‘And that’s the very reason,”
old McEwan said to him once, “that the
‘James and Mary’ is the safest part of the
river,” and he shoved the big black Ban-
doorah, that draws twenty-five feet, through
the Eastern Gat, with a turban of white
foam wrapped round her forefoot and
her screw beating as steadily as his own
heart.
If Jim could not get away to the river
there was always the big, cool Port Office,
where the soundings were worked out and
the maps drawn; or the Pilots’ room, where
he could lie in a long chair and listen quietly
to the talk about the Hugh; and there was
the library, where if you had money you
could buy charts and books of directions
against the time that you would actually
have to steam over the places themselves.
It was exceedingly hard for Jim to hold the
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 73
list of Jewish Kings in his head, and he was
more than uncertain as to the end of the
verb audio if you followed it far enough down
the page, but he could keep the soundings
of three channels distinct in his head, and,
what is more confusing, the changes in the
buoys from ‘‘Garden Reach’' down to
Saugor, as well as the greater part of the
Calcutta Telegraphy the only paper he ever
read.
Unluckily, you cannot peruse about the
Hugh without money, even though you are
the son of the best-known pilot on the river,
and as soon as Trevor understood how his
son was spending his time, he cut down his
pocket money, of which Jim had a very
generous allowance. In his extremity he
took counsel with Pedro, the plum-coloured
mulatto at the Sailors’ Home, and Pedro was
a bad, designing man. He introduced Jim
to a Chinaman in Muchuatollah, an un¬
pleasing place in itself, and the Chinaman,
who answered to the name of Erh-Tze, when
he was not smoking opium, talked business
in pigeon-English to Jim for an hour. Every
bit of that business from first to last was
flying in the face of every law on the river,
but it interested Jim.
74
LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘S’pose you takee. Can do?” Erh-Tze
said at last.
Jim considered his chances. A junk, he
knew, would draw about eleven feet and the
regular fee for a qualified pilot, outward
to the Sandheads, would be two hundred
rupees. On the one hand he was not quali¬
fied, so he dared not ask more than half.
But, on the other hand, he was fully certain
of the thrashing of his life from his father
for piloting without license, let alone what
the Port Authorities might do to him. So
he asked one hundred and seventy-five
rupees, and Erh-Tze beat him down to a
hundred and twenty. The cargo of his
junk was worth anything from seventy to
a hundred and fifty thousand rupees, some
of which he was getting as enormous freight
on the coffins of thirty or forty dead China¬
men, whom he was taking to be buried in
their native country.
Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for
this service, and they have a superstition
that the iron of steamships is bad for the
spiritual health of their dead. Erh-Tze’s
junk had crept up from Singapore, via
Penang and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where
Erh-Tze had been staggered by the Pilot
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 75
dues. This time he was going out at a
reduction with Jim, who, as Pedro kept
telling him, was just as good as a pilot, and
a heap cheaper.
Jim knew something of the manners of
junks, but he was not prepared, when he
went down that night with his charts, for
the confusion of cargo and coolies and coffins
and clay-cooking places, and other things
that littered her decks. He had sense
enough to haul the rudder up a few feet,
for he knew that a junk’s rudder goes far
below the bottom, and he allowed a foot
extra to Erh-Tze’s estimate of the junk’s
depth. Then they staggered out into mid¬
stream very early, and never had the city
of his birth looked so beautiful as when he
feared he would not come back to see it.
Going down ‘‘Garden Reach” he discovered
that the junk would answer to her helm if
you put it over far enough, and that she had
a fair, though Chinese, notion of sailing.
He took charge of the tiller by stationing
three Chinese on each side of it, and stand¬
ing a little forward, gathered their pigtails
into his hands, three right and three left,
as though they had been the yoke lines of a
row-boat. Erh-Tze almost smiled at this;
76 LAND AND SEA TALES
he felt he was getting good care for his money
and took a neat little polished bamboo to
keep the men attentive, for he said this was
no time to teach the crew pigeon-English.
The more way they could get on the junk
the better would she steer, and as soon as
he felt a little confidence in her, Jim ordered
the stiff, rustling sails to be hauled up
tighter and tighter. He did not know their
names — at least any name that would be
likely to interest a Chinaman — but Erh-Tze
had not banged about the waters of the
Malay Archipelago all his life for nothing.
He rolled forward with his bamboo, and the
things rose like Eastern incantations.
Early as they were on the river, a big
American oil (but they called it kerosene in
those days) ship was ahead of them in tow,
and when Jim saw her through the lifted
mist he was thankful. She would draw all
of seventeen feet, and if he could steer by
her they would be safe. It is easier to
scurry up and down the “James and Mary”
in a police-boat that someone else is han¬
dling than to cram a hardmouthed old junk
across the same sands alone, with the cer¬
tainty of a thrashing if you come out alive.
Jim glued his eyes to the American, and
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 77
saw that at Fultah she dropped her tug and
stood down the river under sail. He all but
whooped aloud, for he knew that the number
of pilots who preferred to work a ship
through the “James and Mary” was strictly
limited. “If it isn’t Father, it’s Dearsley,”
said Jim, “and Dearsley went down yester¬
day with the BancoorUy so it’s Father. If I’d
gone home last night instead of going to
Pedro, I’d have met him. He must have
got his ship quick, but — Father is a very
quick man.” Then Jim reflected that they
kept a piece of knotted rope on the pilot
brig that stung like a wasp; but this thought
he dismissed as beneath the dignity of an
officiating pilot, who needed only to nod his
head to set Erh-Tze’s bamboo to work.
As the American came round, just before
the Fultah Sands, Jim raked her with
his spy-glass, and saw his father on the
poop, an unlighted cigar between his teeth.
That cigar, Jim knew, would be smoked on
the other side of the “James and Mary,”
and Jim felt so entirely safe and happy that
he lit a cigar on his own account. This
kind of piloting was child’s play. His
father could not make a mistake if he tried;
and Jim, with his six obedient pigtails in
78 LAND AND SEA TALES
his two hands, had leisure to admire the
perfect style in which the American was
handled — how she would point her bowsprit
jeeringly at a hidden bank, as much as to
say, “Not to-day, thank you, dear,’’ and
bow down lovingly to a buoy as much as to
say, You It a gentleman, at any rate,”
and come round sharp on her heel with a
flutter and a rustle, and a slow, steady swing
something like a well-dressed woman staring
all round the theatre through opera-glasses.
It was hard work to keep the junk near
her, though Erh-Tze set everything that
was by any means settable, and used his
bamboo most generously. When they were
nearly under her counter, and a little to
her left, Jim, hidden behind a sail, would feel
warm and happy all over, thinking of the
thousand nautical and piloting things that
he knew. When they fell more than half
a mile behind, he was cold and miserable
thinking of all the million things he did' not
know or was not quite sure of. And so
they went down, Jim steering by his father,
turn for turn, over the Mayapur Bar, with
the semaphores on each bank duly signalling
the depth of water, through the Western
Gat, and round Makoaputti Lumps, and in
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 79
and out of twenty places, each more exciting
than the last, and Jim nearly pulled the six
pigtails out for pure joy when the last of the
^‘James and Mary” had gone astern, and
they were walking through Diamond Har¬
bour.
From there to the mouth of the Hugh
things are not so bad — at least, that was
what Jim thought, and held on till the swell
from the Bay of Bengal made the old junk
heave and snort, and the river broadened
into the inland sea, with islands only a foot
or two high scattered about it. The Amer¬
ican walked away from the junk as soon as
they were beyond Kedgeree, and the night
came on and the river looked very big and
desolate, so Jim promptly anchored some¬
where in grey water, with the Saugor Light
away off toward the east. He had a great
respect for the Hugh to the last yard of her,
and had no desire whatever to find himself
on the Gasper Sand or any other little shoal.
Erh-Tze and the crew highly approved of
this piece of seamanship. They set no
watch, lit no lights, and at once went to
sleep.
Jim lay down between a red-and-black
lacquer coffin and a little live pig in a basket.
8o
LAND AND SEA TALES
As soon as it was light he began studying his
chart of the Hugh mouth, and trying to
find out where in the river he might be.
He decided to be on the safe side and wait
for another sailing-ship and follow her out.
So he made an enormous breakfast of rice
and boiled fish, while Erh-Tze lit fire¬
crackers and burned gilt paper to the Joss
who had saved them so far. Then they
heaved up their rough-and-tumble anchor,
and made after a big, fat, iron four-masted
sailing-ship, heavy as a hay-wain.
The junk, which was really a very
Weatherly boat, and might have begun life as
a private pirate in Annam forty years before,
followed under easy sail; for the four-master
would run no risks. She was in old Mc-
Ewan’s hands, and she waddled about like
a broody hen, giving each shoal wide allow¬
ances. All this happened near the outer
Floating Light, some hundred and twenty
miles from Calcutta, and apparently in the
open sea.
Jim knew old McEwan’s appetite, and
often heard him pride himself on getting his
ship to the pilot brig close upon meal hours,
so he argued that if the pilot brig was get-
at-able (and Jim himself had not the ghost
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 8i
of a notion where she would lie), McEwan
would find her before one o’clock.
It was a blazing hot day, and McEwan
fidgeted the four-master down to "‘Pilots
Ridge” with what little wind remained, and
sure enough there lay the pilot brig, and
Jim felt shivers up his back as Erh-Tze paid
him his hundred and twenty rupees and he
went overside in the junk’s one crazy dinghy.
McEwan was leaving the four-master in a
long, slashing whale-boat that looked very
spruce and pretty,- and Jim could see that
there was a certain amount of excitement
among the pilots on the brig. There was
his father too. The ragged Chinese boat¬
men gave way in a most ragged fashion, and
Jim felt very unwashen and disreputable
when he heard the click of McEwan’s oars
alongside, and McEwan saying, “James
Trevor, Ell trouble you to lay alongside
yy
me.
Jim obeyed, and from the corner of one eye
watched McEwan’s angry whiskers stand up
all round his face, which turned purple.
“An’ how is it you break the regulations
o’ the Porrt o’ Calcutta.^ Are ye aware o’
the penalties and impreesonments ye’ve laid
yourself open to?” McEwan began.
82
LAND AND SEA TALES
Jim said nothing. There was not very
much to say just then; and McEwan roared
aloud: ‘‘Man, yeVe perrsonated a Hugh
pilot, an’ that ’s as much as to say ye’ve
perrsonated ME! What did yon heathen
give ye for honorarium?”
“’Hundred and twenty,” said Jim.
“‘An’ by what manner o’ means did ye
get through the ‘James and Mary’?”
“Father,” was the answer. “He went
down the same tide and I — we — steered by
him.”
McEwan whistled and choked, perhaps
it was with anger. “Ye’ve made a stalkin’-
horse o’ your father, then? Jim, laddie^
he’ll make an example o’ you.”
The boat hooked on to the brig’s chains,
and McEwan said, as he set foot on deck
before Jim could speak, “Yon’s an enter¬
prising cub o’ yours, Trevor. Ye’d better
enter him in the regular business, or one o’
these fine days he’ll be acting as pilot before
he’s qualified, and sinkin’ junks in the Fair¬
way. He fetched yon junk down last night.
If ye’ve no other designs I’m thinkin’ I’ll
take him as my cub, for there’s no denying
he’s a resourceful lad — for all he’s an un¬
licked whelp.”
AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 83
‘^That/’ said Trevor, reaching for Jim’s
left ear, “is something we can remedy,” and
he led him below.
The little knotted rope that they keep for
general purposes on the pilot-brig did its
duty, but when it was all over Jim was
unlicked no longer. He was McEwan’s
property to be registered under the laws
of the Port of Calcutta, and a week later,
when the Ellora came along, he bundled over
the pilot brig’s side with McEwan’s enam¬
elled leather hand-bag and a roll of charts
and a little bag of his own, and he dropped
into the sternsheets of the pilot gig with
a very creditable imitation of McEwan’s
slow, swaying sit-down and hump of the
shoulders.
THE JUNK AND DHOW
ONCE a pair of savages found a stranded
tree.
{One-piecee stick-pidgin — two-piecee man.
Straddle-um — paddle-um — push-um off to sea.
That way Foleign Devil-boat began.^)
But before and before, and ever so long
before
Any shape of sailing-craft was known,
The Junk and Dhow had a stern and a bow.
And a mast and a sail of their own — alone,
alone !
As they crashed across the Oceans on their
own !
Once there was a pirate-ship, being blown
ashore —
{Plitty soon pilum up^ sfosee no can tack.
Seven-piecee stlong man pullum staFoa d oar.
That way bling her head alound and sailo
back.)
^Remember, the Chinaman generally says “1” for “r.”
84
THE JUNK AND DHOW 85
But before, and before, and ever so long
before
Grand Commander Noah took the wheel.
The Junk and the Dhow, though they look
like anyhow.
Had rudders reaching deep below their
keel — akeel — akeel !
As they laid the Eastern Seas beneath
their keel !
Once there was a galliot yawing in a
tide.
{Too much foolee side-slip. How can
stop ?
Man catchee tea-box lid — lasha longaside.
That way make her plenty glip and sail
first-chop.)
But before, and before, and ever so long
before
Any such contrivances were used.
The whole Confucian sea-board had stan¬
dardized the lee-board.
And hauled it up or dropped it as they
choosed — or chose — or choosed!
According to the weather, when they
cruised !
86 LAND AND SEA TALES
Once there was a caravel in beam-sea
roll —
{Cargo shiftee — alia dliftee — no can livee
long,
S^posuni nailo boa’d acloss — makee ploper
hoV?
That way, cargo sittum still, an ship mo^
stlong.)
But before, and before, and ever so long
before
Any square-rigged vessel hove in sight
The Canton deep-sea craft carried bulk¬
heads fore and aft.
And took good care to keep ’em water¬
tight — atite — atite !
From Amboyna to the Great Australian
Bight !
Once there was a sailor-man singing just this
way —
{Too muchee yowUo, sickum best fiend!
Singe e all-same pullee lope — haul and belay.
Hully up and coilum down an — bite ojff
end I)
But before, and before, and ever so long
before
Any sort of chanty crossed our lips.
THE JUNK AND DHOW 87
The Junk and the Dhow, though they look
like anyhow,
Were the Mother and the Father of all
Ships — ahoy ! — aships !
And of half the new inventions in our
Ships !
From Tarifa to Formosa of our Ships!
From Socotra to SeD?z^hor of the
windlass and the anchor.
And the Navigators’ Compass on our
Ships — ahoy! — our Ships
(0, hully up and coilum down and bite off end!)
I
I
0
r
I;
i
HIS GIFT
« I
0
^ ■, '■
HIS GIFT
HIS Scoutmaster and his comrades, who
disagreed on several points, were
united in one conviction — that William
Glasse Sawyer was, without exception, the
most unprofitable person, not merely in the
Pelican Troop, who lived in the wilderness
of the 47th Postal District, London S. E.,
but in the whole body of Boy Scouts
throughout the world.
No one, except a ferocious uncle who was
also a French-polisher, seemed responsible
for his beginnings. There was a legend that
he had been entered as a Wolf-Cub at the age
of eight, under Miss Doughty, whom the
uncle had either bribed or terrorized to
accept him; and that after six months Miss
Doughty confessed that she could make
nothing of him and retired to teach school
in the Yorkshire moors. There is also a
red-headed ex-cub of that troop (he is now in
a shipping-office) who asserts proudly that
he used to bite William Glasse Sawyer on
91
92
LAND AND SEA TALES
the leg in the hope of waking him up, and
takes most of the credit for William’s pres¬
ent success. But when William moved into
the larger life of the Pelicans, who were gay
birds, he was not what you might call alert.
In shape he resembled the ace of diamonds;
in colour he was an oily sallow.
He could accomplish nothing that re¬
quired one glimmer of reason, thought or
commonsense. He cleaned himself only
under bitter compulsion; he lost his bear¬
ings equally in town or country after a five-
minutes’ stroll. He could track nothing
smaller than a tram-car on a single line, and
that only if there were no traffic. He could
neither hammer a nail, carry an order, tie
a knot, light a fire, notice any natural
object, except food, or use any edged tool
LA. 1
except a table knife. To crown all, his
innumerable errors and omissions were not
even funny.
But it is an old law of human nature that
if you hold to one known course of conduct
— good or evil — you end by becoming an
institution; and when he was fifteen or
thereabouts William achieved that position.
The Pelicans gradually took pride in the
notorious fact that they possessed the only
HIS GIFT
93
Sealed Pattern, Mark A, Ass — an unique
jewel, so to speak, of Absolute, Unalterable
Incapacity. The poet of a neighbouring
troop used to write verses about him, and
recite them from public places, such as the
tops of passing trams. William made no
comment, but wrapped himself up in long
silences that he seldom broke till the juniors
of the Troop (the elders had given it up long
before) tried to do him good turns with their
scout-staves.
In private life he assisted his uncle at the
mystery of French-polishing, which, he said,
was “boiling up things in pots and rubbing
down bits of wood.’’ The boiling-up, he
said, he did not mind so much. The rub¬
bing down he hated. Once, too, he volun¬
teered that his uncle and only relative had
been in the Navy, and “did not like to be
played with”; and the vision of William
playing with any human being upset even
his Scoutmaster.
Now it happened, upon a certain summer
that was really a summer with heat to it, the
Pelicans had been lent a dream of a summer
camp in a dream of a park, which offered
opportunities for every form of diversion,
including bridging muddy-banked streams.
94
LAND AND SEA TALES
and unlimited cutting into young alders
and undergrowth at large. A convenient
village lay just outside the Park wall, and
the ferny slopes round the camp were rich
in rabbits, not to mention hedgehogs and
other fascinating vermin. It was reached
— Mr. Hale their Scoutmaster saw to that —
after two days’ hard labour, with the Troop
push-cart, along sunny roads.
William’s share in the affair was — what it
had always been. First he lost most of his
kit; next his uncle talked to him after the
fashion of the Navy of ’96 before refitting
him; thirdly he went lame behind the push¬
cart by reason of a stone in his shoe, and on
arrival in camp dropped — not for the first,
second or third time — into his unhonoured
office as Camp Orderly, and was placed at
the disposal of The Prawn, whose light blue
eyes stuck out from his freckled face, and
whose long narrow chest was covered with
badges. From that point on, the procedure
was as usual. Once again did The Prawn
assure his Scoutmaster that he would take
enormous care of William and give him work
suited to his capacity and intelligence. Once
again did William grunt and wriggle at the
news, and once again in the silence of the
HIS GIFT
95
deserted camp next morning, while the rest
of the Pelicans were joyously mucking them¬
selves up to their young bills at bridging
brooks, did he bow his neck to The Prawn’s
many orders. For The Prawn was a born
organizer. He set William to unpack the
push-cart and then to neatly and exactly
replace all parcels, bags, tins, and boxes.
He despatched him thrice in the forenoon
across the hot Park to fetch water from a
distant well equipped with a stiff-necked
windlass and a split handle that pinched
William’s fat palms. He bade him collect
sticks, thorny for choice, out of the flanks of
a hedge full of ripe nettles against which
Scout uniforms offer small protection.
He then made him lay them in the camp
cooking-place, carefully rejecting the green
ones, for most sticks were alike to William;
and when everything else failed, he set him
to pick up stray papers and rubbish the
length and breadth of the camp. All that
while, he not only chased him with comments
but expected that William would show
gratitude to him for forming his young
mind.
‘^’Tisn’t everyone ’ud take this amount
o’ trouble with you. Mug,” said The Prawn
96 LAND AND SEA TALES
virtuously, when even his energetic soul
could make no further work for his vassal.
‘‘Now you open that bully-beef tin and
we’ll have something to eat, and then you’re
off duty — for a bit. I shall try my hand at
a little camp-cooking.”
William found the tin — at the very bot¬
tom, of course, of the push-cart; cut himself
generously over the knuckles in opening it
(till The Prawn showed him how this should
be done), and in due course, being full of
bread and bully, withdrew towards a grate¬
ful clump of high fern that he had had his
eye on for some time, wriggled deep into it,
and on a little rabbit-browsed clearing of
turf, stretched out and slept the sleep of
the weary who have been up and under strict
orders since six a.m. Till that hour of that
day, be it remembered, William had given
no proof either of intelligence or initiative
in any direction.
He waked, slowly as was his habit, and
noticed that the shadows were stretching a
little, even as he stretched himself. Then
he heard The Prawn clanking pot-lids, be¬
tween soft bursts of song. William sniffed.
The Prawn was cooking — ^was probably
qualifying for something or other; The
HIS GIFT
97
Prawn did nothing but qualify for badges.
On reflection William discovered that he
loved The Prawn even less this camp than
the last, or the one before that. Then he
heard the voice of a stranger.
‘‘Yes,” was The Prawn’s reply. “I’m in
charge of the camp. Would you like to look
at it, sir?”
“Seen ’em — seen heaps of ’em,” said the
unknown. “My son was in ’em once —
Buffaloes, out Hendon-way. What are
you<
“Well, just now I’m a sort of temporary
Cook,” said The Prawn, whose manners were
far better than William’s.
“Temp’ry! Temp’ry!” the stranger
puffed. “Can’t be a temp’ry cook any
more’n you can be a temp’ry Parson. Not
so much. Cookin’s cookin’. Let’s see your
notions of cookin’.”
William had never heard any one address
The Prawn in these tones, and somehow it
cheered him. In the silence that followed
he turned on his face and wriggled unosten¬
tatiously through the fern, as a Scout
should, till he could see that bold man with¬
out attracting The Prawn’s notice. And
this, too, was the first time that William
98 LAND AND SEA TALES
had ever profited by the instruction of his
Scoutmaster or the example of his comrades.
Heavenly sights rewarded him. The
Prawn, visibly ill at ease, was shifting from
one sinewy leg to the other, while an enor¬
mously fat little man with a pointed grey
beard and arms like the fins of a fish investi¬
gated a couple of pots that hung on properly
crutched sticks over the small fire that
William had lighted in the cooking-place.
He did not seem to approve of what he saw
or smelt.- And yet it was the impeccable
Prawn’s own cookery!
‘‘Lor!” said he at last after more sniffs
of contempt, as he replaced the lid. “If
you hot up things in tins, that ain’t cookery.
That’s vittles — mere vittles! And the way
you’ve set that pot on, you’re drawing all
the nesty wood-smoke into the water. The
spuds won’t take much harm of it, but
you’ve ruined the meat. That is meat,
ain’t it.^ Get me a fork.”
William hugged himself. The Prawn,
looking exactly like his namesake well-
boiled, fetched a big fork. The little man
prodded into the pot.
“It’s stew!” The Prawn explained, but
his voice shook.
HIS GIFT
99
‘‘ Lor ! ” said the man again. “ It’s boilin’ !
It’s boilin’! You don’t boil when you
stew, my son; an’ as for this'' — up came a
grey slab of mutton — “there’s no odds be¬
tween this and motor-tyres. Well! Well!
As I was sayin’ - ” He joined his hands be¬
hind his globular back and shook his head
in silence. After a while, The Prawn tried
to assert himself.
“Cookin’ isn’t my strong point,” began
The Prawn, “but - ”
“Pore boys! Pore boys!” the stranger
soliloquized, looking straight in front of
him. Pore little boys! Wicked, / call it.
They don’t ever let you make bread, do they,
my son.^”
The Prawn said they generally bought
their bread at a shop.
“Ah! I’m a shopkeeper meself. Marsh,
the Baker here, is me. Pore boys! Well!
Well! . . . Though it’s against me own
interest to say so, / think shops are wicked.
They sell people things out o’ tins which
save ’em trouble, an’ fill the ’ospitals with
stummick-cases afterwards. An’ the muck
that’s sold for flour. . . .” His voice
faded away and he meditated again. “Well
— well! As I was sayin’ - Pore boys!
loo LAND AND SEA TALES
Pore boys! Em glad you ain’t askin’ me
to dinner. Good bye.”
He rolled away across the fern, leaving The
Prawn dumb behind him.
It seemed to William best to wriggle back
in his cover as far as he could, ere The Prawn
should call him to work again. He was
not a Scout by instinct, but his uncle had
shown him that when things went wrong
in the world, someone generally passed it
onto someone else. Very soon he heard
his name called, acidly, several times. He
crawled out from the far end of the fern-
patch, rubbing his eyes, and The Prawn
re-enslaved him on the spot. For once in
his life William was alert and intelligent, but
The Prawn paid him no compliments, nor
when the very muddy Pelicans came back
from the bridging did The Prawn refer in any
way to the visit of Mr. E. M. Marsh & Son,
Bakers and Confectioners in the village
street just outside the Park wall. Nor,
for that matter, did he serve the Pelicans
much besides tinned meats for their evening
meal.
To say that William did not sleep a wink
that night would be what has been called
“nature-faking”; which is a sin. His sys-
HIS GIFT
lOI
tern demanded at least nine hours’ rest, but
he lay awake for quite twenty minutes, dur¬
ing which he thought intensely, rapidly and
joyously. Had he been asked he would
have said that his thoughts dealt solely
with The Prawn and the judgment that had
fallen upon him; but William was no psy¬
chologist. He did not know that hate —
raging hate against a too-badged, too vir¬
tuous senior — had shot him into a new
world, exactly as the large blunt shell is
heaved through space and dropped into a
factory, a garden or a barracks by the charge
behind it. And, as the shell, which is but
metal and mixed chemicals, needs only a
graze on the fuse to spread itself all over
the landscape, so did his mind need but
the touch of that hate to flare up and il¬
luminate not only all his world, but his own
way through it.
Next morning something sang in his ear
that it was long since he had done good
turns to any one except his uncle, who was
slow to appreciate them. He would amend
that error; and the more safely since The
Prawn would be ofif all that day with the
Troop on a tramp in the natural history line,
and his place as Camp Warden and Provost
102 LAND AND SEA TALES
Marshal would be filled by the placid and
easy-going Walrus, whose proper name was
Carpenter, who never tried for badges, but
who could not see a rabbit without going
after him. And the owner of the Park had
given full leave to the Pelicans to slay by
any means, except a gun, any rabbits they
could. So William ingratiated himself with
his Superior Officer as soon as the Pelicans
had left. . . .
No, the excellent Carpenter did not see
that he needed William by his side all day.
He might take himself and his bruised foot
pretty much where he chose. He went,
and this new and active mind of his that
he did not realize, accompanied him —
straight up the path of duty which, poetry
tells us, is so often the road to glory.
He began by cleaning himself and his kit
at seven o’clock in the morning, long before
the village shops were open. This he did
near a postern gate with a crack in it, in
the Park wall, commanding a limited but
quite sufficient view of the establishment
of E. M. Marsh & Son across the street.
It was perfect weather, and about eight
o’clock Mr. Marsh himself in his shirt¬
sleeves rolled out to enjoy it before he took
HIS GIFT
103
down the shutters. Hardly had he shifted
the first of them when a fattish Boy Scout
with a flat face and a slight limp laid hold
of the second and began to slide it towards
him.
“Well, well!’' said Mr. Marsh. “Ah!
Your good turn, eh.?”
“Yes,” said William briefly.
“That’s right! Handsomely now, hand¬
somely,” for the shutter was jamming in
its groove. William knew from his uncle
that “handsomely” meant slowly and with
care. The shutter responded to the coax¬
ing. The others followed.
“ Belay!” said Mr. Marsh, wiping his fore¬
head, for, like William, he perspired easily.
When he turned round William had gone.
The Movies had taught him, though he
knew it not, the value of dramatic effect.
He continued to watch Mr. Marsh through
the crack in the postern — it was the little
wooden door at the end of the right of way
through the Park — and when, an hour or so
later, Mr. Marsh came out of his shop and
headed towards it, William retired back¬
wards into the high fern and brambles.
The manoeuvre would have rejoiced Mr.
Hale’s heart, for generally William moved
104 land and sea tales
like an elephant with its young. He turned
up, quite casually, when Mr. Marsh had
puffed his way again into the empty camp.
Carpenter was off in pursuit of rabbits, with
a pocket full of fine picture-wire. It was
the first time William had ever done the
honours of any establishment. He came to
attention and smiled.
‘^Well! Well!” Mr. Marsh nodded
friendlily. ‘‘ What are
‘‘Camp-guard,” said William, improvising
for the first time in his life. “Can I show
you anything, sir.?”
“No, thank ’ee. My son was a Scout
once. IVe just come to look round at
things. ’No one tryin’ any cookin’ to¬
day.?”
“No, sir.”
“’Bout’s well. Pore boys! What you
goin’ to have for dinner.? Tinned stuff.?”
“I expect so, sir.”
“D’you like it.?”
“’Used to it.” William rather approved
of this round person who wasted no time
on abstract ideas.
boys! Well! Well! It saves trouble
— for the present. Knots and splices in
your stummick afterwards — in ’ospital.”
HIS GIFT
loS
Mr. Marsh looked at the cold camp cooking-
place and its three big stones, and sniffed.
‘‘Would you like it lit.?’’ said William,
suddenly.
“What for.?”
“To cook with.”
“What d’ you know about cookin’.?” Mr.
Marsh’s little eyes opened wide.
“Nothing, sir.”
“What makes you think /’m a cook.?”
“ By the way you looked at our cooking-
place,” the mendacious William answered.
The Prawn had always urged him to culti¬
vate habits of observation. They seemed
easy — after you had observed the things.
“Well! Well! Quite a young Sherlock,
you are. ’Don’t think much o’ this,
though.” Mr. Marsh began to stoop to
rearrange the open-air hearth to his liking.
“Show me how and I’ll do it,” said
William.
“ Shove that stone a little more to the left
then. Steady — So! That’ll do! Got any
wood.? No.? You slip across to the shop
and ask them to give you some small brush-
stuff from the oven. Stop ! A nd my apron,
too. Marsh is the name.”
William left him chuckling wheezily.
io6 LAND AND SEA TALES
When he returned Mr. Marsh clad himself
in a long white apron of office which showed
so clearly that Carpenter from far off re¬
turned at once.
H’sh ! H’sh ! ” said Mr. Marsh before he
could speak. “You carry on with what
you’re doing. Marsh is my name. My son
was a Scout once. Buffaloes — Hendon-way.
It’s all right. Don’t you grudge an old man
enjoying himself.”
The Walrus looked amazedly at William
moving in three directions at once with his
face on fire.
“ It’s all right,” said William. “ He’s giv¬
ing us cooking-lessons.” Then — the words
came into his mouth by themselves — “I’ll
take the responsibility.”
“Yes, yes! He knew I could cook.
Quite a young Sherlock he is! You carry
on.” Mr. Marsh turned his back on the
Walrus and despatched William again with
some orders to his shop across the road.
“And you’d better tell ’em to put ’em all
in a basket,” he cried after him.
William returned with a fair assortment
of mixed material, including eggs, two
rashers of bacon, and a packet of patent
flour concerning which last Mr. Marsh said
HIS GIFT
107
things no baker should say about his own
goods. The frying-pan came out of the
push-cart, with some other oddments, and
it was not till after it was greased that Mr.
Marsh demanded William’s name. He got
it in full, and it produced strange effects on
the little fat man.
‘‘An’ ’ow do you spell your middle
name?” he asked.
“G-l-a-double-s-e,” said William.
“Might that be your mother’s?” William
nodded. “Well! Well! I wonder now! I
do wonder. It’s a great name. There was a
Sawyer in the cooking line once, but ’e was a
Frenchman and spelt it different. Glasse is
serious though. And you say it was your
ma’s.” He fell into an abstraction, frying-
pan in hand. Anon, as he cracked an egg
miraculously on its edge — “Whether you’re
a descendant or not, it’s worth livin’ up to,
a name like that.”
“Why?” said William, as the egg slid into
the pan and spread as evenly as paint under
an expert’s hand.
“I’ll tell you some day. She was a very
great cook — but she’d have come expensive
at to-day’s prices. Now, you take the pan
an’ I’ll draw me own conclusions.”
io8 LAND AND SEA TALES
The boy worked the pan over the level red
fire with a motion that he had learned some¬
how or other while ‘‘boiling up’' things for
his uncle. It seemed to him natural and
easy. Mr. Marsh watched in unbroken si¬
lence for at least two minutes.
“It’s early to say — yet,” was his verdict.
“But I ’ave ’opes. You ’ave good ’ands,
an’ your knowin’ I was a cook shows you
’ave the instinck. If you ’ave got the
Touch — mark you, I only say if — but if
you ’ave anything like the Genuine Touch,
you’re provided for for life, further —
don’t tilt her that way! — you ’old your
neighbours, friends and employers in the
’ollow of your ’and.”
“How do you mean.?” said William, in¬
tent on his egg.
“Everything which a man is depends
on what ’e puts inside ’im,” was the reply.
“A good cook’s a King of men — besides
being thunderin’ well off if ’e don’t drink.
It’s the only sure business in the whole round
world; and /’ve been round it eight times,
in the Mercantile Marine, before I married
the second Mrs. M.”
William, more interested in the pan than
Mr. Marsh’s marriages, made no reply.
HIS GIFT
109
‘‘Yes, a good cook,” Mr. Marsh went on
reminiscently, “even on Board o’ Trade
allowance, ’as brought many a ship to port
that ’ud otherwise ’ave mut’nied on the
’igh seas.”
The eggs and bacon mellowed together.
Mr. Marsh supplied some wonderful last
touches and the result was eaten, with the
Walrus’s help, sizzling out of the pan and
washed down with some stone ginger-beer
from the convenient establishment of Mr.
E. M. Marsh outside the Park wall.
“I’ve ruined me dinner,” Mr. Marsh
confided to the boys, “but I ’aven’t en¬
joyed myself like this, not since Noah was
an able seaman. You wash up, young
Sherlock, an’ I’ll tell you something.”
He filled an ancient pipe with eloquent
tobacco, and while William scoured the
pan, he held forth on the art and science
and mystery of cooking as inspiredly as Mr.
Jorrocks, Master of Foxhounds, had lec¬
tured upon the Chase. The burden of his
song was Power — power which, striking
directly at the stomach of man, makes
the rudest polite, not to say sycophantic,
towards a good cook, whether at sea, in
camp, in the face of war, or (here he em-
no LAND AND SEA TALES
bellished his text with personal experiences)
the crowded competitive cities where a good
meal was as rare, he declared, as silk py¬
jamas in a pig-sty. “An’ mark you,*’ he
concluded, “three times a day the ’aughtiest
and most overbearin’ of ’em all ’ave to come
crawling to you for a round belly-full.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it out,
young Sherlock!”
He unloosed his sacrificial apron and
rolled away.
The Boy Scout is used to strangers
who give him good advice on the smallest
provocation; but strangers who fill you up
with bacon and eggs and ginger-beer are
few.
“What started it all.^” the Walrus de¬
manded.
“Well, I can’t exactly say,” William
answered, and as he had never been known
to give a coherent account of anything, the
Walrus returned to his wires, and William
lay out and dreamed in the fern among the
cattle-flies. He had dismissed The Prawn
altogether from his miraculously enlarging
mind. Very soon he was on the High Seas,
a locality which till that instant had never
appealed to him, in a gale, issuing bacon
HIS GIFT
III
and eggs to crews on the edge of mutiny.
Next, he was at war, turning the tides of it
to victory for his own land by meals of bacon
and eggs that brought bemedalled Generals
in troops like Pelicans, to his fire-place.
Then he was sustaining his uncle, at the
door of an enormous restaurant, with plates
of bacon and eggs sent out by gilded com¬
missionaires such as guard the cinemas,
while his uncle wept with gratitude and
remorse, and The Prawn, badges and all,
begged for scraps.
His chin struck his chest and half waked
him to fresh flights of glory. He might
have the Genuine Touch, Mr. Marsh had
said it. Moreover, he, the Mug, had a
middle name which filled that great man
with respect. All the 47th Postal District
should ring with that name, even to the
exclusion of the racing-news, in its evening
papers. And on his return from camp, or
perhaps a day or two later, he would defy
his very uncle and escape for ever from the
foul business of French-polishing.
Here he slept generously and dreamlessly
till evening, when the Pelicans returned,
their pouches full of samples of uncookable
vegetables and insects, and the Walrus
1 12 LAND AND SEA TALES
made his report of the day’s Camp doings
to the Scoutmaster.
‘‘Wait a minute, Walrus. You say the
Mug actually did the cooking.^”
“Mr. Marsh had him under instruction,
sir. But the Mug did a lot of it — he held
the pan over the fire. I saw him, sir. And
he washed up afterwards.”
“Did he?” said the Scoutmaster lightly.
“Well, that’s something. But when the
Walrus had gone Mr. Hale smote thrice
upon his bare knees and laughed, as a Scout
should, without noise.
He thanked Mr. Marsh next morning for
the interest he had shown in the camp, and
suggested (this was while he was buying
many very solid buns for a route-march)
that nothing would delight the Pelicans
more than a few words from Mr. Marsh on
the subject of cookery, if he could see his
way to it.
“Quite so,” said Mr. Marsh, “/’m
worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll be
along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring
some odds and ends with me. Send over
young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch
’em. That's a boy with ’is stummick in the
proper place. ’Know anything about ’im ? ”
HIS GIFT
113
Mr. Hale knew a good deal, but he did not
tell it all. He suggested that William him¬
self should be approached, and would ex¬
cuse him from the route-march for that
purpose.
‘‘Route-march!” said Mr. Marsh in
horror. “Lor! The very worst use you
can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em.
’Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e ain’t got the
figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build
as well as instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily
in the skin, broad in the beam, short in the
arm, buty mark you, light on the feet. That’s
the way cooks ought to be issued. You
never ’eard of a really good thin cook yet,
did you.^ No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known
millions that called ’emselves cooks.”
Mr. Hare regretted that he had not stud¬
ied the natural history of cooks, and sent
William over early in the day.
Mr. Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an
hour that evening beside an open wood fire,
from the ashes of which he drew forth
(talking all the while) wonderful hot cakes
called “dampers”; while from its top he
drew off pans full of “lobscouse,” which he
said was not to be confounded with “sal¬
magundi,” and a hair-raising compound of
1 14 LAND AND SEA TALES
bacon, cheese and onions all melted together.
And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed
them with mirth or held them breathless
with anecdotes of the High Seas and the
World, so that the vote of thanks they
passed him at the end waked the cows in the
Park. But William sat wrapped in visions,
his hands twitching sympathetically to Mr.
Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and pans.
He knew now what the name of Glasse
signified; for he had spent an hour at the
back of the baker’s shop reading, in a brown-
leather book dated 1767 a. d. and called
‘‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy
by a Lady,” and that lady’s name, as it ap¬
peared in facsimile at the head of Chap. I,
was “H. Glasse.” Torture would not have
persuaded him, or Mr. Marsh, by that time,
that she was not his direct ancestress; but,
as a matter of form, he intended to ask his
uncle.
When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr.
Marsh had made no reference to his notions
of cookery, asked William what he thought
of the lecture and exhibition, William came
out of his dreams with a start, and “Oh,
all right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening
much.” Then The Prawn, who always im-
HIS GIFT
IIS
proved an occasion, lectured him on lack of
attention; and William missed all that too.
The question in his mind was whether his
uncle would let him stay with Mr. Marsh
for a couple of days after Camp broke up,
or whether he would use the reply-paid tele¬
gram, which Mr. Marsh had sent him, for
his own French-polishing concerns. When
The Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only prom¬
ised to do better next time, but added, out
of a vast and inexplicable pity that sud¬
denly rose up inside him, “And Tm grate¬
ful to you, Prawn. I am really.”
On his return to town from that wonder-
revealing visit, he found the Pelicans treat¬
ing him with a new respect. For one thing,
the Walrus had talked about the bacon
and eggs; for another. The Prawn, who when
he let himself go, could be really funny,
had given some artistic imitations of Mr.
Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly,
Mr. Hale had laid down that William’s
future employ would be to cook for the
Pelicans when they camped abroad. “And
look out that you don’t poison us too much,”
he added.
There were occasional mistakes and some
very flat failures, but the Pelicans swallowed
ii6 LAND AND SEA TALES
them all loyally; no one had even a stomach¬
ache, and the office of Cook’s mate to Wil¬
liam was in great demand. The Prawn
himself sought it next Spring when the
Troop stole a couple of fair May days on
the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very
happy. But William set him aside in
favour of a new and specially hopeless re¬
cruit; oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but
light on his feet, and with some notion of
lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding
the whole fire-place.
‘‘You see. Prawn,” he explained, “cookin’
isn’t a thing one can just pick up.”
“Yes, I could — watchin’ you,” The Prawn
insisted.
“No. Mr. Marsh says it’s a Gift — same
as a Talent.”
“D’you mean to tell me Rickworth’s got
it, then.?”
“Dunno. It’s my job to find that out —
Mr. Marsh says. Anyway, Rickworth told
me he liked cleaning out a fryin’ pan because
it made him think of what it might be
cookin’ next time.”
“Well, if that isn’t silliness, it’s just
greediness,” said The Prawn. “What about
those dampers you were talking of when
HIS GIFT
117
I bought the fire-lighters for you this morn-
ing?-
William drew one out of the ashes, tapped
it lightly with his small hazel-wand of office,
and slid it over, puffed and perfect, towards
The Prawn.
Once again the wave of pity — the Mas¬
ter’s pity for the mere consuming Public —
swept over him as he watched The Prawn
wolf it down.
‘‘ I’m grateful to you. I reely am^ Prawn,”
said William Glasse Sawyer.
After all, as he was used to say in later
years, if it hadn’t been for The Prawn, where
would he have been.?^
PROLOGUE TO THE MASTER-
COOK’S TALE
This is what might be called a parody or imitation of
the verses of Geoffrey Chaucer^ one of the earliest and
the greatest of our English poets. It looks difficult to
read, but you will find it comes quite easily if you say it
aloud, remembering that where there is an accent over
the end of a word, that word is pronounced as two
syllables — not one. Snailes,” for instance, would be
spoken as snai-les” and so on.
WITH us there rade a Maister-Cook
that came
From the Rochelle which is neere Angouleme.
Littel hee was, but rounder than a topp,
And his small herd hadde dipped in manie a
soppe.
His honde was smoother than beseemeth
mann’s,
And his discoorse was all of marzipans,^
Of tripes of Caen, or Burdeux snailes swote,^
And Seinte Menhoulde wher cooken pigges-
foote.^
kind of sticky sweatmeat. ^Bordeaux snails are specially
large and sweet. ^They grill pigs ’-feet still at St. Menehoulde, not
far from Verdun, better than anywhere else in all France.
ii8
THE MASTER-COOK
119
To Thoulouse and to Bress and Carcasson
For pyes and fowles and chesnottes hadde
hee wonne;^
Of hammes of Thuringie^ colde hee prate,
And well hee knew what Princes hadde on
plate
At Christmas-tide, from Artois to Gascogne.
Lordinges, quod hee, manne liveth nat alone
By bred, but meates rost and seethed, and
broth.
And purchasable^ deinties, on mine othe.
Honey and hote gingere well liketh hee.
And whales-flesch mortred^ with spicerie.
For, lat be all how man denie or carpe,^
Him thries a daie his honger maketh sharpe.
And setteth him at boorde® with hawkes
eyne.
Snuffing what dish is set beforne to deyne.
Nor, till with meate he all-to fill to
brim.
None other matter nowher mooveth him.
Lat holie Seintes sterve^ as bookes boast.
Most mannes soule is in his bellie most.
^Gone — to get pates of ducks’ liver at Toulouse; fatted poultry
at Bourg in Bresse, on the road to Geneva; and very large chest¬
nuts in sugar at Carcassonne about forty miles from Toulouse,
^his would probably be some sort of wild boar ham from Ger¬
many. ^Expensive. '‘Beaten up. ^Sneer or despise. ^Brings
him to table. ^Starve.
120 LAND AND SEA TALES
For, as man thinketh in his hearte is hee,
But, as hee eateth so his thought shall bee.
And Holie Fader’s selP (with reveraunce)
Oweth to Cooke his port and his presaunce.
Wherbye it cometh past disputison^
Cookes over alle men have dominion.
Which follow them as schippe her gou-
vernaiE '
Enoff of wordes — beginneth heere my tale:-
^The Pope himself, who depends on his cook for being healthy
and well-fed. ^Dispute or argument. ^Men are influenced by
their cooks as ships are steered by their rudders.
A FLIGHT OF FACT
A FLIGHT OF FACT
Most of this tale actually happened during the War
about the year igi6 or igiy, but it was much funnier as
I heard it told by an English Naval officer than it is as
I have written it from memory. It shows, what one al¬
ways believed was true, that there is nothing that cannot
happen in the Navy.
HM. S. Gardenia (we will take her name
. from the Herbaceous Border which
belonged to the sloops, though she was a
destroyer by profession) came quietly back
to her berth some time after midnight, and
disturbed half a dozen of her sisters as she
settled down. They all talked about it
next morning, especially Phlox and Stephan-
Otis, her left- and right-hand neighbours in
the big basin on the east coast of England,
that was crowded with destroyers.
But the soul of the Gardenia — Lieutenant-
in-Command H. R. Duckett — was lifted
far above insults. What he had done
during his last trip had been well done.
Vastly more important — Gardenia was in
123
124
LAND AND SEA TALES
for a boiler-clean — which meant four days’
leave for her commanding officer.
‘‘Where did you get that fender from,
you dock-yard burglar.^” Stephanotis clam¬
oured over his rail, for Gardenia was wear¬
ing a large coir-matting fender, evidently
fresh from store, over her rail. It creaked
with newness. “You common thief of the
beach, where did you find that new fender.?”
The only craft that a destroyer will, some¬
times, not steal equipment from is a de¬
stroyer; which accounts for the purity of her
morals and the loftiness of her conversation,
and her curiosity in respect to stolen fillings.
Duckett, unmoved, went below, to return
with a valise which he carried on to His
Majesty’s quarter-deck, and, atop of a suit
of rat-catcher clothes, crammed into it a
pair of ancient pigskin gaiters.
Here Phlox, assisted by her Dandy Din-
mont, Dinah, who had been trained to howl
at certain notes in her master’s voice, gave
a spirited and imaginary account of Gar¬
denia s return the night before, which was
compared to that of an ambulance with a
lady-driver. Duckett retaliated by slipping
on to his head for one coquettish instant a
gravy-coloured soft cloth cap. It was the
A FLIGHT OF FACT
I2S
last straw. Phlox and Stephanotis, who
had no hope of any leave for the present,
pronounced it an offence, only to be wiped
out by drinks.
‘‘All things considered,’’ said Duckett.
“I don’t care if I do. Come along!” and,
the hour being what it was, he gave the
necessary orders through the wardroom’s
tiny skylight. The captains came. Phlox
— Lieutenant Commander Jerry Marlett, a
large and weather-beaten person, docked
himself in the arm-chair by the ward¬
room stove with his cherished Dinah in his
arms. Great possessions and much land,
inherited from an uncle, had removed him
from the Navy on the eve of war. Three
days after the declaration of it he was back
again, and had been very busy ever since.
Stephanotis — Lieutenant-in-Command Au¬
gustus Holwell Rayne, alias “The Damper,”
because of his pessimism, spread himself out
on the settee. He was small and agile, but
of gloomy outlook, which a D. S. O. earned,
he said, quite by mistake, could not lighten.
“Horse” Duckett, Gardenia s skipper, was
a reversion to the primitive Marryat type
— a predatory, astute, resourceful pirate, too
well known to all His Majesty’s dockyards, a
126 LAND AND SEA TALES
man of easily injured innocence who could
always prove an alibi, and in whose ship, if
his torpedo-coxswain had ever allowed any
one to look there, several sorts of missing
Government property might have been
found. His ambition was to raise pigs
(animals he only knew as bacon) in Shrop¬
shire (a county he had never seen) after the
war, so he waged his war with zeal to bring
that happy day nearer. He sat in the arm¬
chair by the door, whence he controlled the
operations of ‘‘Crippen,’’ the wardroom
steward, late of Bolitho’s Travelling Circus
and Swings, who had taken to the high seas
to avoid the attentions of the Police ashore.
As usual, Duckett’s character had been
blackened by My Lords of the Admiralty,
and he was in the midst of a hot campaign
against them. An able-seaman’s widowed
mother had sent a ham to her son whose
name was E. R. Davids. Unfortunately,
Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies, who swore
that he had both a mother and expectations
of hams from her, came across the ham first,
and, misreading its address, had had it
boiled for, and at once eaten by, the En¬
gineers’ mess. E. R. Davids, a vindictive
soul, wrote to his mother, who, it seems.
A FLIGHT OF FACT
127
wrote to the Admiralty, who, according to
Duckett, wrote to him daily every day for a
month to know what had become of E. R.
Davids’ ham. In the meantime the guilty
Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies had been
transferred to a sloop off the Irish coast.
“An’ what the dooce am I to do?”
Duckett asked his guests plaintively.
“Apply for leave to go to Ireland with a
stomach-pump and heave the ham out of
Davies,” Jerry suggested promptly.
“That’s rather a wheeze,” said Duckett.
“I had thought of marrying Davids’ mother
to settle the case. Anyhow, it was all
Crippen’s fault for not steering the ham into
the wardroom when it came aboard. Don’t
let it occur again, Crippen. Hams are
going to be very scarce.”
“Well, now you’ve got all that off your
chest” — ^Jerry Marlett lowered his voice —
“suppose you tell us about what happened
— the night before last.”
The talk became professional. Duckett
produced certain evidence — still damp — in
support of the claims that he had sent in
concerning the fate of a German submarine,
and gave a chain of facts and figures and
bearings that the others duly noted.
128 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘And how did your Acting Sub do?”
asked Jerry at last.
“Oh, very fair, but I didn’t tell him so, of
course. They’re hard enough to hold at
the best of times, these makee-do officers.
Have you noticed that they are always above
their job — always thinkin’ round the corner
when they’re thinkin’ at all. On our way
back, this young merchant o’ mine — when
I’d almost made up my mind to tell him he
wasn’t as big tripes as he looked — told me
his one dream in life was to fly. Fly! He
flew alright by the time I’d done with him,
but — imagine a Sub tellin one a thing like
that! ‘It must be so interestin’ to fly,’ he
said. The whole North Sea one blooming
burgoo of what-come-nexts, an’ this pup
complainin’ of lack of interest in it! Fly!
Fly! When / was a Sub-Lootenant - ”
He turned pathetically towards The
Damper, who had known him in that rank in
the Mediterranean.
“There wasn’t much flyin’ in our day,”
said The Damper mournfully. “ But I
can’t remember anything else we didn’t
do.”
“Quite so; but we had some decency
knocked into us. The new breed wouldn’t
A FLIGHT OF FACT
129
know decency if they met it on a dungfork.
Thaf s what I mean.”
“When / was Actin’ Sub,” Jerry opened
thoughtfully, “in the Polycarp — the pious
Polycarp — Nineteen-O-Seven, I got nine
cuts of the best from the Senior Sub for
occupyin’ the bathroom ten seconds too
long. Twenty minutes later, just when the
welts were beginnin’ to come up, y’ know, I
was sent off in the gig with a Corporal o’
Marines an’ a private to fetch the Headman
of All the Pelungas aboard. He was wanted
for slavery, or barratry, or bigamy or some¬
thing.”
“All the Pelungas.^” Duckett repeated
with interest. “’Odd you should mention
that part of the world. What are the
Pelungas like.^”
“Very nice. Hundreds of islands and
millions of coral reefs with atolls an’ lagoons
an’ palm-trees, an’ all the population
scullin’ round in outrigger canoes between
’em like a permanent regatta. Filthy navi¬
gation, though. Polycarp had to lie five
miles out on account of the reefs (even then
our navigator was tearin’ his hair) an’ I
had an hour’s steerin’ on hot hard thwarts.
Talk o’ tortures! You know. We landed
130 LAND AND SEA TALES
in a white lather at the boat-steps of the
Headman’s island. The Headman wasn’t
takin’ any at first. He’d drawn up his
whole army — three hundred strong, with old
Martini rifles an’ a couple of ancestral seven-
pounders in front of his fort. We didn’t know
anything about his domestic arrangements.
We just dropped in among ’em so to say.
Then my Corporal of Marines — the fattest
man in the Service bar one — fell down the
landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime
Minister — about as fat as my Corporal — and
he helped him up. Well, that broke the ice a
bit. The Prime Minister was a statesman.
He poured oil on the crisis, while the Head¬
man cursed me and the Navy and the British
Government, and I kept wrigglin’ in my
white ducks to keep ’em from drawin’ tight
on me. You know how it feels! I remem¬
ber I told the Headman the Polycarp ’ud
blow him an’ his island out of the water if he
didn’t come along quick. She could have
done it — in a week or two; but we were
scrubbin’ hammocks at the time. I for¬
got that little fact for the minute. I was
a bit hot — all over. The Prime Minister
soothed us down again, an’ by and by the
Headman said he’d pay us a state call — as a
A FLIGHT OF FACT
131
favour. I didn’t care what he called it s’-
long as he came. So I lay about a quarter of
a mile off-shore in the gig, in case the seven-
pounders pooped off — I knew the Martinis
couldn’t hit us at that range — and I waited
for him till he shoved off in his State barge
— forty rowers a side. Would you believe it,
he wanted to take precedence of the White
Ensign on the way to the ship ? I had to fall
him in behind the gig and bring him along¬
side properly. I was so sore I could hardly
get aboard at the finish.”
“What happened to the Headman.^”
said The Damper.
“Nothing. He was acquitted or con¬
demned — I forget which — but he was a
perfect gentleman. We used to go sailing
with him and his people — dancing with ’em
on the beach and all that sort of thing. /
don’t want to meet a nicer community
than the Pelungaloos. They aren’t used
to white men — but they’re first-class learn-
ers.
“Yes, they do seem a cheery crowd,”
Duckett commented.
“Where have you come across them?”
said Jerry.
“Nowhere; but this Acting Sub of mine
132 LAND AND SEA TALES
has got a cousin who’s been flying down
there.”
“Flying in All the Pelungas.^” Jerry
cried. “That’s impossible!”
“In these days? Where’s your bright
lexicon of youth ? Nothing’s impossible any¬
where now,” Duckett replied. “All the
best people fly.”
“Count me out,” Jerry grunted. “We
went up once, Dinah, little dog, and it made
us both very sick, didn’t it? When did it
all happen. Horse?”
“Some time last year. This chap, my
Sub’s cousin — a man called Baxter — went
adrift among All the Pelungas in his machine
and failed to connect with his ship. He was
reported missing for months. Then he
turned up again. That’s all.”
“He was called Baxter?” said The
Damper. “Hold on a shake! I wonder if
he’s ‘Beloo’ Baxter, by any chance. There
was a chap of that name about five years
ago on the China Station. He had himself
tattooed all over, regardless, in Rangoon.
Then he got as good as engaged to a woman
in Hongkong — rich woman too. But the
Pusser of his ship gave him away. He had a
regular cinema of frogs and dragonflies up
A FLIGHT OF FACT
133
his legs. And that was only the beginnin’
of the show. So she broke off the engage¬
ment, and he half-killed the Pusser, and
then he became a Buddhist, or something.’’
^‘That couldn’t have been this Baxter, or
my Sub would have told me,” said Duckett.
“My Sub’s a morbid-minded young ani¬
mal.”
'' Maskee^ your Sub’s mind!” said Jerry.
“What was this Baxter man — plain or
coloured — doin’ in All my Pelungas.?”
“As far as I can make out,” said Duckett,
“Lootenant Baxter was flyin’ in those parts
— with an observer — out of a ship.”
“Yes, but what for?'' Jerry insisted.
“And what ship
“He was flyin’ for exercise, I suppose, an’
his ship was the Cormorang. D’you feel
wiser.? An’ he flew, an’ he flew, an’ he flew
till, between him an’ his observer and the
low visibility and Providence and all that
sort of thing, he lost his ship — just like some
other people I know. Then he flapped
about huntin’ for her till dusk among the
Pelungas, an’ then he effected a landin’ on
the water.”
“A nasty wet business — landin’ that way.
^Never mind.
134
LAND AND SEA TALES
Dinah. We know,” said Jerry into the keen
little cocked ear in his lap.
“Then he taxied about in the dark till he
taxied on to a coral-reef and couldn’t get
the machine off. Coral ain’t like mud, is it
The question was to Jerry, but the insult was
addressed to The Damper, who had lately
spent eighteen hours on a soft and tenacious
shoal off the East Coast. The Damper
launched a kick at his host from where he
lay along the settee.
“Then,” Duckett went on, “this Baxter-
man got busy with his wireless and S O S’ed
like winkie till the tide came and floated
the old bus off the reef, and they taxied over
to another island in the dark.”
“Thousands of Islands in All the Pe-
lungas,” Jerry murmured. “Likewise reefs
— hairy ones. What about the reefs.?”
“Oh, they kept on hittin’ reefs in the
dark, till it occurred to them to fire their
signal lights to see ’em by. So they went
blazin’ an’ stinkin’ and taxyin’ up and down
the reefs till they found a gap in one of ’em
and they taxied bung on to an uninhabited
island.”
“That must have been good for the ma¬
chine,” was Jerry’s comment.
A FLIGHT OF FACT
I3S
‘H don’t deny it. I’m only tailin’ you
what my Sub told me. Baxter wrote it all
home to his people, and the letters have been
passed round the family. Well, then o’
course, it rained. It rained all the rest of
the night, up to the afternoon of the next
day. (It always does when you’re in a hole.)
They tried to start their engine in the in¬
tervals of climbin’ palm-trees for coco-nuts.
They’d only a few buscuits and some water
with ’em.”
“’Don’t like climbin’ palm-trees. It
scrapes you raw,” The Damper moaned.
“An’ when they weren’t climbin’ or
crankin’ their engine, they tried to get into
touch with the natives on the next nearest
island. But the natives weren’t havin’ any.
They took to the bush.”
“Ah!” said Jerry sympathetically.
“That aeroplane was too much for ’em.
Otherwise, they’re the most cosy, confiden¬
tial lot I ever met. Well, what happened V
“Baxter sweated away at his engine till
she started up again. Then he flew round
lookin’ for his ship some more till his petrol
ran out. Then he landed close to another un¬
inhabited island and tried to taxi up to it.”
“Why was he so keen on z^Tzinhabited
136 LAND AND SEA TALES
islands? I wish Fd been there. Fd ha’
shown him round the town,” said Jerry.
‘‘I don’t know his reasons, but that was
what he wrote home to his people,” Duckett
went on. “Not havin’ any power by that
time, his machine blew on to another reef
and there they were! No grub, no petrol,
and plenty of sharks! So they snugged
her down. I don’t know how one snugs
down an aeroplane,” Duckett admitted,
“but Baxter took the necessary steps to
reduce the sail-area, and cut the spanker-
boom out of the tail-tassels or whatever it
is they do on an aeroplane when they want
her to be quiet. Anyhow, they more or
less secured the bus to that reef so they
thought she wouldn’t fetch adrift; and they
tried to coax a canoe over that happened to
be passing. Nothin’ doin’ there! ’Canoe made
one bunk of it.”
“He tickled ’em the wrong way,” Jerry
sighed. “There’s a song they sing when
they’re fishing.” He began to hum dole¬
fully.
“I expect Baxter didn’t know that tune,”
Duckett interrupted. “He an’ his ob¬
server cursed the canoe a good deal, an’
then they went in for swimmin’ stunts all
A FLIGHT OF FACT
137
among the sharks, until they fetched up on
the next island when they came to it — it took
^em an hour to swim there — but the minute
they landed the natives all left. ’Seems
to me,” said Duckett thoughtfully, ‘‘ Baxter
and his observer must have spread a pretty
healthy panic scullin’ about All the Pelungas
in their shirts.”
“But why shirts said Jerry. “Those
waters are perfectly warm.”
“If you come to that, why not shirts?”
Duckett retorted. “A shirt’s a badge of
civilization - ”
“Never mind your shirts. What hap¬
pened after that?” said The Damper.
“They went to sleep. They were tired
by that time — oddly enough. The natives
on that island had left everything standing
when they bunked — -fires lighted, chickens
runnin’ about, and so forth. Baxter slept
in one of the huts. About midnight some
of the bold boys stole back again. Baxter
heard ’em talkin’ just outside, and as he
didn’t want his face trod on, he said ‘Sa¬
laam.’ That cleared the island for the
second time. The natives jumped three
foot into the air and shoved off.”
“Good Lord!” said Jerry impatiently.
138 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘/V have had ’em eating out of my hand in
ten seconds. ‘Salaam’ isn’t the word to use
at all. What he ought to have said - ”
“Well, anyhow, he didn’t,” Duckett re¬
plied. “He and his observer had their
sleep out an’ they woke in the mornin’ with
ragin’ appetites and a strong sense of de¬
cency. The first thing they annexed was
some native loin-cloths off a bush. Baxter
wrote all this home to his people, you know.
I expect he was well brought up.”
“If he was ‘Beloo’ Baxter no one would
notice - ” The Damper began.
“ He wasn’t. He was just a simple, virtu¬
ous Naval Officer — like me. He an’ his ob¬
server navigated the island in full dress in
search of the natives, but they’d gone and
taken the canoe with ’em. Baxter was so
depressed at their lack of confidence that he
killed a chicken an’ plucked it and drew it
(I bet neither of you know how to draw
fowls) an’ boiled it and ate it all at once.”
“Didn’t he feed his observer?” The
Damper asked. “I’ve a little brother
what’s an observer up in the air. I’d hate
to think he - ”
“The observer was kept busy wavin’ his
shirt on the beach in order to attract the at-
A FLIGHT OF FACT
139
tention of local fishin’ craft. That was
what he was for. After breakfast Baxter
joined him an’ the two of ’em waved shirts
for two hours on the beach. An’ that’s the
sort of thing my Sub prefers to servin’ with
me ! — Me ! After a bit, the Pelungaloos
decided that they must be harmless luna¬
tics, and one canoe stood pretty close in, an’
they swam out to her. But here’s a curious
thing! Baxter wrote his people that, when
the canoe came, his observer hadn’t any
shirt at all. ’Expect he’d expended it
wavin’ for succour. But Baxter’s shirt was
all right. He went out of his way to tell his
people so. An’ my Sub couldn’t see the
humour of it one little bit. How does it
strike you.?”
^‘Perfectly simple,” said Jerry. ^‘Loo-
tenant Baxter as executive officer in charge
took his subordinate’s shirt owin’ to the
exigencies of the Service. I’d ha’ done the
same. Pro-ceed.”
‘‘There’s worse to follow. As soon as
they got aboard the canoe and the natives
found they didn’t bite, they cottoned to ’em
no end. ’Gave ’em grub and dry loin¬
cloths and betel-nut to chew. What’s betel-
nut like, Jerry.?”
140 LAND AND SEA TALES
"‘Grateful an’ comfortin’. Warms you
all through and makes you spit pink. It’s
non-intoxicating.”
“Oh! I’ve never tried it. Well then,
there was Baxter spittin’ pink in a loin¬
cloth an’ a canoe-ful of Pelungaloo fisher¬
men, with his shirt dryin’ in the breeze.
’Got that.^ Well, then his aeroplane, which
he thought he had secured to the reef of the
next island, began to drift out to sea. That
boy had to keep his eyes open, I tell you.
He wanted the natives to go in and makee-
catchee the machine, and there was a big
palaver about it. They naturally didn’t
care to compromise themselves with strange
idols, but after a bit they lined up a dozen
canoes — no, eleven, to be precise — Baxter
was awfully precise in his letters to his peo¬
ple — an’ tailed on to the aeroplane an’ towed
it to an island.”
“Excellent,” said Jerry Marlett, the com¬
plete Lieutenant-Commander. “I was get-
tin’ worried about His Majesty’s property.
Baxter must have had a way with him. A
loin-cloth ain’t uniform, but it’s dashed
comfortable. An’ how did All my Pe-
lungaloos treat ’em.^”
“We-ell!” said Duckett, “Baxter was
A FLIGHT OF FACT
141
writin’ home to his people, so I expect he
toned things down a bit, but, readin’ be¬
tween the lines, it looks as if — an’ that's why
my Sub wants to take up flyin’ of course —
it looks as if, from then on, they had what
you might call Garden-of-Eden picnics for
weeks an’ weeks. The natives put ’em under
a guard o’ sorts just for the look of the thing,
while the news was sent to the Headman,
but as far as I can make out from my Sub’s
reminiscences of Baxter’s letters, their
guard consisted of the entire male and fe¬
male population goin’ in swimmin’ with ’em
twice a day. At night they had concerts — •
native songs versus music-hall — in alternate
what d’you call ’em.? Anti-somethings.
’Phone, ain’t it.?”
‘‘They are a musical race! I’m glad he
struck that side of their nature,” Jerry mur¬
mured.
“I’m envious,” Duckett protested. “Why
should the Flyin’ Corps get all the plums.?
But Baxter didn’t forget His Majesty’s
aeroplane. He got ’em to tow it to his
island o’ delights, and in the evenings he
an’ his observer, between the musical turns,
used to give the women electric shocks off
the wireless. And, one time, he told his
142
LAND AND SEA TALES
observer to show ’em his false teeth, and
when he took ’em out the people all bolted.”
‘‘But that’s in Rider Haggard. It’s in
‘ King Solomon’s Mines’,” The Damper re¬
marked.
“P’raps that’s what put it into Baxter’s
head then,” said Duckett. “Or else,” he
suggested warily, “ Baxter wanted to crab
his observer’s chances with some lady.”
“Then he was a fool,” The Damper
snarled. “It might have worked the other
way. It generally does.”
“Well, one can’t foresee everything,” said
Duckett. “Anyhow, Baxter didn’t com¬
plain. They lived there for weeks and
weeks, singin’ songs together and bathin’
an’ — oh, yes! — gamblin’. Baxter made a
set of dice too. He doesn’t seem to have
neglected much. He said it was just to
pass the time away, but I wonder what he
threw for. I wish I knew him. His letters
to his people are too colourless. What a life
he must have led! Women, dice and song,
an’ your pay rollin’ up behind you in per¬
fect safety with no exertion on your part.”
“There’s a dance they dance on moonlight
nights,” said Jerry, “with just a few banana
leaves - Never mind. Go ahead!”
A FLIGHT OF FACT
143
‘‘All things bright and beautiful — fineesh,”
Duckett mourned. “Presently the Head¬
man of All the Pelungas came along - ”
“"My friend I hope it was. A first-
class sportsman,’" said Jerry.
“Baxter didn’t say. Anyhow, he turned
up and they were taken over to the capital
island till they could be sent back to their
own ship. The Headman did ’em up to the
nines in every respect while they were with
him (Baxter’s quite enthusiastic over it,
even in writin’ to his own people), but, o’
course, there’s nothing like first love, is
there.? They must have felt partin’ with
their first loves. / always do. And then
they were put into the full uniform of All
the Pelungaloo Army. What’s that like,
Jerry? You’ve seen it.”
“ It’s a cross between a macaw an’ a rain-
bow-ended mandrill. Very tasty.”
“Just as they were gettin’ used to that,
and they’d taught the Headman and his
Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s
your lady friend?" they were embarked on a
dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over
the ocean and returned to the Cormorang,
which, o’ course, had reported ’em missing
and dead months before. They had one
144 land and sea TALES
final kick-up before returnin’ to duty. You
see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in
the Pelungas, and they were both in Pe-
lungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they
went aboard the Cormorang they weren’t
recognized till they were half-way down to
their cabins.”
^‘And then.^” both Captains asked at
once.
^‘That’s where Baxter breaks off — even
though he’s writin’ to his own people. He’s
so apologetic to ’em for havin’ gone missin’
and worried ’em, an’ he’s so sinful proud
of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall
songs, that he only said that they had ‘some
reception aboard the Cormorang. ’ It lasted
till midnight.”
“It is possible. What about their ma¬
chine.^” said Jerry.
“The Cormorang ran down to the Pe¬
lungas and retrieved it all right. But I
should have liked to have seen that recep¬
tion. There is nothing I’d ha’ liked better
than to have seen that reception. And it
isn’t as if I hadn’t seen a reception or two
either.”
“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the
Quartermaster at the door.
A FLIGHT OF FACT
145
‘‘Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett
muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding,
“Fm going to scratch the backs of swine for
the next three days. G’wout!”
The well-trained servant was already
fleeting along the edge of the basin with his
valise. Stephanotis and Phlox returned to
their own ships, loudly expressing envy and
hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at
his gang-way rail to beckon to his torpedo-
coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a peacetime sailor
of mild and mildewed aspect who had fol¬
lowed Duckett’s shady fortunes for some
years.
“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where did
we get that new starboard fender of ours
from.^”
“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep
when we came in,” said Wilkins through
lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But
our port one come orf the water-boat. We
’ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last
night, sir, and we — er — found it on ’er.”
“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home
fires burning,” and Lieutenant-in-Command
H. R. Duckett sped after his servant in the
direction of the railway-station. But not
so fast that he could outrun a melody played
146 LAND AND SEA TALES
aboard the Phlox on a concertina to which
manly voices bore the burden:
When the enterprisin’ burglar ain’t aburglin’ —
ain’t aburglin’,
When the cut-throat is not occupied with crime
— ’pied with crime.
He loves to hear the little brook agurglin’ -
Moved, Heaven knows, whether by con¬
science or kindliness. Lieutenant Duckett
smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard
gates.
STALKY
“STALKY”
This happens to he the first story that was written
<oncerning the adventures and performances of three
schoolboys — ^‘Stalky” McTurk and Beetle For
some reason or other, it was never put into the book,
called Stalky ^ Co.f* that was made out of the stories,
A certain amount of it, I am sorry to say, is founded on
fact, though that is no recommendation; and the only
moral that I can see in it is, that when for any reason
you happen to get into a tight place, you have a better
chance of coming out of it comfortably if you keep your
head than if you get excited and dont stop to think.
And then/’ it was a boy’s voice, curi-
. ously level and even, “De Vitre said
we were beastly funks not to help, and I
said there were too many chaps in it to suit
us. Besides, there’s bound to be a mess
somewhere or other, with old De Vitre in
charge. Wasn’t I right. Beetle.?”
“And, anyhow, it’s a silly biznai, bung
through. What’ll they do with the beastly
cows when they’ve got ’em.? You can milk
a cow — if she’ll stand still. That’s all right,
but drivin’ ’em about - ”
“You’re a pig. Beetle.”
149
150 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘No, I ain’t. What is the sense of drivin’
a lot of cows up from the Burrows to — to —
where is it.^”
“They’re tryin’ to drive ’em up to Too-
wey’s farmyard at the top of the hill — the
empty one, where we smoked last Tuesday.
It’s a revenge. Old Vidley chivied De Vitre
twice last week for ridin’ his ponies on the
Burrows; and De Vitre’s goin’ to lift as
many of old Vidley’s cattle as he can and
plant ’em up the hill. He’ll muck it,
though — with Parsons, Orrin and Howlett
helpin’ him. They’ll only yell, an’ shout,
an’ bunk if they see Vidley.”
might have managed it,” said Mc-
Turk slowly, turning up his coat-collar
against the rain that swept over the Bur¬
rows. His hair was of the dark mahogany
red that goes with a certain temperament.
“We should,” Corkran replied with equal
confidence. “ But they’ve gone into it as if
it was a sort of spadger-hunt. I’ve never
done any cattleliftin’, but it seems to me-e-e
that one might just as well be stalky about
a thing as not.”
The smoking vapours of the Atlantic
drove in wreaths above the boys’ heads.
Out of the mist to windward, beyond the
‘‘STALKY”
iSi
grey bar of the Pebble Ridge, came the un¬
ceasing roar of mile-long Atlantic rollers.
To leeward, a few stray ponies and cattle,
the property of the Northam potwallopers,
and the unwilling playthings of the boys
in their leisure hours, showed through the
haze. The three boys had halted by the
Cattle-gate which marks the limit of culti¬
vation, where the fields come down to the
Burrows from Northam Hill. Beetle, shock¬
headed and spectacled, drew his nose to and
fro along the wet top-bar; McTurk shifted
from one foot to the other, watching the
water drain into either print; while Corkran
whistled through his teeth as he leaned
against a sod-bank, peering into the mist.
A grown or sane person might have called
the weather vile; but the boys at that School
had not yet learned the national interest in
climate. It was a little damp, to be sure;
but it was always damp in the Easter term,
and sea-wet, they held, could not give one
a cold under any circumstances. Mackin¬
toshes were things to go to church in, but
crippling if one had to run at short notice
across heavy country. So they waited
serenely in the downpour, clad as their
mothers would not have cared to see.
152 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his
spectacles for the twentieth time, “if we
aren’t going to help De Vitre, what are we
here for?”
“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer.
“Keep your eye on your Uncle and he’ll
pull you through.”
“It’s an awful biznai, driving cattle — in
open country,” said McTurk, who, as the
son of an Irish baronet, knew something of
these operations. “They’ll have to run
half over the Burrows after ’em. ’S’pose
they’re ridin’ Vidley’s ponies?”
“De Vitre’s sure to be. He’s a dab on a
horse. Listen! What a filthy row they’re
making. They’ll be heard for miles.”
The air filled with whoops and shouts,
cries, words of command, the rattle of
broken golf-clubs, and a clatter of hooves.
Three cows with their calves came up to the
Cattle-gate at a milch-canter, followed by
four wild-eyed bullocks and two rough-
coated ponies. A fat and freckled youth of
fifteen trotted behind them, riding bare-
back and brandishing a hedge-stake. De
Vitre, up to a certain point, was an inven¬
tive youth, with a passion for horse-exercise
that the Northam farmers did not en-
‘‘STALKY”
IS3
courage. Farmer Vidley, who could not
understand that a grazing pony likes being
galloped about, had once called him a thief,
and the insult rankled. Hence the raid.
“Come on,” he cried over his shoulder.
“Open the gate, Corkran, or they’ll all cut
back again. We’ve had no end of bother to
get ’em. Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild!”
Three boys on foot ran up, “shooing” the
cattle in excited and amateur fashion, till
they headed them into the narrow, high-
banked Devonshire lane that ran uphill.
“Come on, Corkran. It’s no end of a
lark,” pleaded De Vitre; but Corkran shook
his head. The affair had been presented to
him after dinner that day as a completed
scheme, in which he might, by favour, play
a minor part. And Arthur Lionel Corkran,
No. 104, did not care for lieutenancies.
“You’ll only be collared,” he cried, as he
shut the gate. “Parsons and Orrin are no
good in a row. You’ll be collared sure as a
gun, De Vitre.”
“Oh, you’re a beastly funk!” The
speaker was already hidden by the fog.
“ Hang it all,” said McTurk. “ It’s about
the first time we’ve ever tried a cattle-lift
at the Coll. Let’s - ”
IS4 LAND AND SEA TALES
“Not much,” said Corkran firmly; “keep
your eye on your Uncle.” His word was
law in these matters, for experience had
taught them that if they manoeuvred with¬
out Corkran they fell into trouble.
“You’re wrathy because you didn’t think
of it first,” said Beetle. Corkran kicked him
thrice calmly, neither he nor Beetle changing
a muscle the while.
! “No, I ain’t; but it isn’t stalky enough for
_ ff
me.
“Stalky,” in their school vocabulary,
meant clever, well-considered and wily, as
applied to plans of action; and “stalkiness”
was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.
“’Same thing,” said McTurk. “You
think you’re the only stalky chap in the
Coll.”
Corkran kicked him as he had kicked
Beetle; and even as Beetle, McTurk took
not the faintest notice. By the etiquette of
their friendship, this was no more than a
formal notice of dissent from a proposition.
“They haven’t thrown out any pickets,”
Corkran went on (That school prepared boys
for the Army). “You ought to do that —
even for apples. Toowey’s farmyard may
be full of farm-chaps.”
‘‘STALKY’’
iSS
“ ’Twasn’t last week,” said Beetle, “when
we smoked in that cartshed place. It’s a
mile from any house, too.”
Up went one of Corkran’s light eyebrows.
“Oh, Beetle, I am so tired o’ kickin’ you!
Does that mean it’s empty now? They
ought to have sent a fellow ahead to look.
They’re simply bound to be collared. An’
where’ll they bunk to if they have to run for
it .f* Parsons has only been here two terms.
He don’t know the lie of the country.
Orrin’s a fat ass, an’ Howlett bunks from a
guv’nor” [vernacular for any native of
Devon engaged in agricultural pursuits]
“as far as he can see any. De Vitre’s the
only decent chap in the lot, an’ — an’ I put
him up to usin’ Toowey’s farmyard.”
“Well, keep your hair on,” said Beetle.
“What are we going to do ^ It’s hefty damp
here.”
“Let’s think a bit.” Corkran whistled
between his teeth and presently broke into
a swift, short double-shuffle. “We’ll go
straight up the hill and see what happens to
’em. Cut across the fields; an’ we’ll lie up
in the hedge where the lane comes in by the
barn — where we found that dead hedgehog
last term. Come on!”
iS6 LAND AND SEA TALES
He scrambled over the earth bank and
dropped onto the rain-soaked plough. It
was a steep slope to the brow of the hill
where Toowey’s barns stood. The boys
took no account of stiles or foot-paths, cross¬
ing field after field diagonally, and where
they found a hedge, bursting through it like
beagles. The lane lay on their right flank,
and they heard much lowing and shouting
in that direction.
‘‘Well, if De Vitre isn’t collared,” said
McTurk, kicking off a few pounds of loam
against a gate-post, “he jolly well ought to
be.”
“We’ll get collared, too, if you go on with
your nose up like that. Duck, you ass, and
stalk along under the hedge. We can get
quite close up to the barn,” said Corkran.
“There’s no sense in not doin’ a thing
stalkily while you’re about it.”
They wriggled into the top of an old hol¬
low double hedge less than thirty yards from
the big black timbered barn with its square
outbuildings. Their ten-minutes’ climb had
lifted them a couple of hundred feet above
the Burrows. As the mists parted here and
there, they could see its great triangle of
sodden green, tipped with yellow sand-
‘‘STALKY’’
157
dunes and fringed with white foam, laid out
like a blurred map below. The surge along
the Pebble Ridge made a background to the
wild noises in the lane.
“What did I tell you?” said Corkran,
peering through the stems of the quickset
which commanded a view of the farmyard.
“Three farm-chaps — getting out dung —
with pitchforks. It’s too late to head off
De Vitre. We’d be collared if we showed
up. Besides, they’ve heard ’em. They
couldn’t help hearing. What asses!”
The natives, brandishing their weapons,
talked together, using many times the word
“Colleger.” As the tumult swelled, they
disappeared into various pens and byres.
The first of the cattle trotted up to the
yard-gate, and De Vitre felicitated his
band.
“That’s all right,” he shouted. “Oh,
won’t old Vidley be wild! Open the gate,
Orrin, an’ whack ’em through. They’re
pretty warm.”
“So’ll you be in a minute,” muttered
McTurk as the raiders hurried into the yard
behind the cattle. They heard a shout of
triumph, shrill yells of despair; saw one
Devonian guarding the gate with a pitch-
iS8 LAND AND SEA TALES
fork, while the others, alas! captured all four
boys.
‘^Of all the infernal, idiotic, lower-second
asses!” said Corkran. “They haven’t even
taken off their house-caps.” These dainty
confections of primary colours were not is¬
sued, as some believe, to encourage House-
pride or esprit-de-corps, but for purposes of
identification from afar, should the wearer
break bounds or laws. That is why, in time of
war, any one but an idiot wore his inside out.
“Aie! Yeou young rascals. We’ve got
’e! Whutt be doin’ to Muster Vidley’s
bullocks.?”
“Oh, we found ’em,” said De Vitre, who
bore himself gallantly in defeat. “Would
you like ’em.?”
“Found ’em! They bullocks drove like
that — all heavin’ an’ penkin’ an’ hotted !
Oh! Shameful. Yeou’ve nigh to killed the
cows — lat alone stealin’ ’em. They sends
pore boys to jail for half o’ this.”
“That’s a lie,” said Beetle to McTurk,
turning on the wet grass.
“I know; but they always say it. ’Mem¬
ber when they collared us at the Monkey
Farm that Sunday, with the apples in your
topper.?”
‘‘STALKY’’
IS9
“ My Aunt ! They’re goin’ to lock ’em up
an’ send for Vidley,” Corkran whispered, as
one of the captors hurried downhill in the
direction of Appledore, and the prisoners
were led into the barn.
“ But they haven’t taken their names and
numbers, anyhow,” said Corkran, who had
fallen into the hands of the enemy more than
once.
“But they’re bottled! Rather sickly for
De Vitre,” said Beetle. “It’s one lickin’
anyhow, even if Vidley don’t hammer
him. The Head’s rather hot about gate-
liftin’, and poachin’, an’ all that sort of
thing. He won’t care for cattle-liftin’
much.”
“It’s awfully bad for cows, too, to run ’em
about in milk,” said McTurk, lifting one
knee from a sodden primrose-tuft. “ What’s
the next move. Corky.?”
“We’ll get into the old cartshed where we
smoked. It’s next to the barn. We can
cut across over while they’re inside and
climb in through the window.”
“S’pose we’re collared?” said Beetle,
cramming his house-cap into his pocket.
Caps may tumble off, so one goes into action
bare-headed.
i6o LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘That’s just it. They’d never dream of
any more chaps walkin’ bung into the trap.
Besides, we can get out through the roof if
they spot us. Keep your eye on your Uncle.
Come on,” said Corkran.
A swift dash carried them to a huge clump
of nettles, beneath the unglazed back win¬
dow of the cartshed. Its open front, of
course, gave on to the barnyard.
They scrambled through, dropped among
the carts, and climbed up into the rudely
boarded upper floor that they had dis¬
covered a week before when in search of
retirement. It covered a half of the building
and ended in darkness at the barn wall.
The roof-tiles were broken and displaced.
Through the chinks they commanded a
clear view of the barnyard, half filled with
disconsolate cattle, steaming sadly in the
rain.
“You see,” said Corkran, always careful
to secure his line of retreat, “if they bottle
us up here, we can squeeze out between
these rafters, slide down the roof, an’ bunk.
They couldn’t even get out through the
window. They’d have to run right round
the barn. Now are you satisfied, you bur-
bler.?”
“STALKY” i6i
“Huh! You only said that to make
quite sure yourself,” Beetle retorted.
“If the boards weren’t all loose, I’d kick
you,” growled Corkran. ‘‘ ’No sense gettin’
into a place you can’t get out of. Shut up
and listen.”
A murmur of voices reached them from
the end of the attic. McTurk tiptoed
thither with caution.
“ Hi ! It leads through'into the barn. You
can get through. Come along!” He fin¬
gered the boarded wall.
“What’s the other side.^” said Corkran
the cautious.
“Hay, you idiot.” They heard his boot-
heels click on wood, and he had gone.
At some time or other sheep must have
been folded in the cartshed, and an inventive
farm-hand, sooner than take the hay round,
had displaced a board in the barn-side to
thrust fodder through. It was in no sense
a lawful path, but twelve inches in the
square is all that any boy needs.
“Look here!” said Beetle, as they waited
for McTurk’s return. “The cattle are
coming in out of the wet.”
A brown, hairy back showed some three
feet below the half-floor, as one by one the
i62 land and sea tales
cattle shouldered in for shelter among the
carts below, filling the shed with their sweet
breath.
‘‘That blocks our way out, unless we get
out by the roof, an’ that’s rather too much
of a drop, unless we have to,” said Corkran.
“They’re all bung in front of the window,
too. What a day we’re havin’!”
“Corkran! Beetle!” McTurk’s whisper
shook with delight. “You can see ’em;
I’ve seen ’em. They’re in a blue funk in the
barn, an’ the two clods are makin’ fun of
’em — horrid. Orrin’s tryin’ to bribe ’em
an’ Parsons is nearly blubbin’. Come an’
look! I’m in the hayloft. Get through the
hole. Don’t make a row. Beetle.”
Lithely they wriggled between the dis¬
placed boards into the hay and crawled to
the edge of the loft. Three years’ skirmish¬
ing against a hard and unsympathetic peas¬
antry had taught them the elements of
strategy. For tactics they looked to Cork¬
ran; but even Beetle, notoriously absent-
minded, held a lock of hay before his head
as he crawled. There was no haste, no be¬
traying giggle, no squeak of excitement.
They had learned, by stripes, the unwisdom
of these things. But the conference by a
‘‘STALKY’’
163
root-cutter on the barn floor was deep in its
own affairs; De Vitre’s party promising, en¬
treating, and cajoling, while the natives
laughed like Inquisitors.
“Wait till Muster Vidley an’ Muster
Toowey — yis, an’ the policemen come,”
was their only answer. “’Tis about time
to go to milkin’. What’ull us do.?’”
“ Yeou go milk, Tom, an’ I’ll stay long o’
the young gentlemen,” said the bigger of
the two, who answered to the name of
Abraham. “Muster Toowey, he’m laike
to charge yeou for usin’ his yard so free.
Iss fai! Yeou’ll be wopped proper. ’Rack-
on yeou’ll be askin’ for junkets to set in
this week o’ Sundays to come. But Muster
Vidley, he’ll give ’ee the best leatherin’ of
all. He’m passionful, I tal ’ee.”
Tom stumped out to milk. The barn
doors closed behind him, and in the fading
light a great gloom fell on all but Abraham,
who discoursed eloquently on Mr. Vidley, his
temper and strong arm.
Corkran turned in the hay and retreated
to the attic, followed by his army.
“ No good,” was his verdict. “ I’m afraid
it’s all up with ’em. We’d better get out.”
“Yes, but look at these beastly cows,” said
i64 land and sea TALES
McTurk, spitting on to a heifer’s back.
‘‘It’ll take us a week to shove ’em away
from the window, and that brute Tom’ll
hear us. He’s just across the yard,
milkin’.”
“Tweak ’em, then,” said Corkran.
“Hang it. I’m sorry to have to go, though.
If we could get that other beast out of the
barn for a minute we might make a rescue.
Well, it’s no good. Tweakons!”
He drew forth a slim, well-worn home¬
made catapult — the “tweaker” of those
days — slipped a buckshot into its supple
chamois leather pouch, and pulled to the full
stretch of the elastic. The others followed
his example. They only wished to get the
cattle out of their way, but seeing the backs
so near, they deemed it their duty each to
choose his bird and to let fly with all their
strength.
They were not prepared in the least for
what followed. Three bullocks, trying to
wheel amid six close-pressed companions,
not to mention three calves, several carts,
and all the lumber of a general-utility shed,
do not turn end-for-end without confusion.
It was lucky for the boys that they stood a
little back on the floor, because one horned
‘‘STALKY’^
i6s
head, tossed in pain, flung up a loose board
at the edge, and it came down lancewise on
an amazed back. Another victim floun¬
dered bodily across the shafts of a decrepit
gig, smashing these and oversetting the
wheels. That was more than enough for the
nerves of the assembly. With wild bellow-
ings and a good dealof left-and-right butting,
they dashed into the barnyard, tails on end,
and began a fine free fight on the midden.
The last cow out hooked down an old set of
harness; it flapped over one eye and trailed
behind her. When a companion trod on
it, which happened every few seconds, she
naturally fell on her knees; and, being a
Burrows cow, with the interests of her calf
at heart, attacked the first passer-by.
Half-awed, but wholly delighted, the boys
watched the outburst. It was in full flower
before they even dreamed of a second shot.
Tom came out from a byre with a pitchfork,
to be chased in again by the harnessed cow.
A bullock floundered on the muck-heap,
fell, rose and bedded himself to the belly,
helpless and bellowing. The others took
great interest in him.
Corkran, through the roof, scientifically
‘Tweaked’’ a frisky heifer on the nose, and
i66 LAND AND SEA TALES
it is no exaggeration to say that she danced
on her hind legs for half a minute.
‘‘Abram! Oh, Abram! They’m be¬
witched. They’m ragin’. ’Tes the milk
fever. They’ve been drove mad. Oh,
Abram! They’ll horn the bullock! They’ll
horn me ! Abram!”
“Bide till I lock the door,” quoth Abra¬
ham, faithful to his trust. They heard him
padlock the barn door; saw him come out
with yet another pitchfork. A bullock
lowered his head, Abraham ran to the near¬
est pig-pen, where loud squeakings told that
he had disturbed the peace of a large
family.
“Beetle,” snapped Corkran. “Go in an’
get those asses out. Quick! We’ll keep
the cows happy.”
A people sitting in darkness and the shad¬
ow of monumental lickings, too depressed
to be angry with De Vitre, heard a voice
from on high saying, “Come up here!
Come on! Come up! There’s a way out.”
They shinned up the loft-stanchions with¬
out a word; found a boot-heel which they
were bidden to take for guide, and squeezed
desperately through a hole in darkness, to
be hauled out by Corkran.
‘‘STALKY” 167
“ Have you got your caps ? Did you give
^em your names and numbers?”
“Yes. No.”
“That’s all right. Drop down here.
Don’t stop to jaw. Over the cart — through
that window, and bunk! Get out
De Vitre needed no more. They heard
him squeak as he dropped among the nettles,
and through the roof-chinks they watched
four slight figures disappear into the rain.
Tom and Abraham, from byre and pig-pen,
exhorted the cattle to keep quiet.
“ By gum 1 ” said Beetle ; “ that was stalky.
How did you think of it?”
“It was the only thing to do. Anybody
could have seen that.”
“Hadn’t we better bunk, too, now?’^
said McTurk uneasily.
“Why? We' It all right. We haven’t done
anything. I want to hear what old Vidley
will say. Stop tweakin’, Turkey. Let ’em
cool off. Golly! how that heifer danced!
I swear I didn’t know cows could be so
lively. We’re only just in time.”
“My Hat! Here's Vidley — and Too-
wey,” said Beetle, as the two farmers strode
into the yard.
“Gloats! oh, gloats! Fids! oh, fids!
i68 LAND AND SEA TALES
Hefty fids and gloats to us!” said Corkran.
These words, in their vocabulary, ex¬
pressed the supreme of delight. ^'Gloats”
implied more or less of personal triumph,
^‘fids” was felicity in the abstract, and the
boys were tasting both that day. Last joy
of all, they had had the pleasure of Mr.
Vidley’s acquaintance, albeit he did not love
them. Toowey was more of a stranger, his
orchards lying over-near to the public road.
Tom and Abraham together told a tale of
stolen cattle maddened by overdriving; of
cows sure to die in calving, and of milk that
would never return; that made Mr. Vidley
swear for three consecutive minutes in the
speech of north Devon.
“’Tes tu bad. ’Tes tu bad,” said Too¬
wey, consolingly; ‘‘let’s ’ope they ’aven’t
took no great ’arm. They be wonderful
wild, though.”
“’Tes all well for yeou, Toowey, that sells
them dom Collegers seventy quart a week.”
“Eighty,” Toowey replied, with the meek
triumph of one who has underbidden his
neighbour on public tender; “but that’s no
odds to me. Yeou’m free to leather ’em
saame as if they was yeour own sons. On
iny barn-floor shall ’ee leather ’em.”
‘‘STALKY’’ 169
“Generous old pig!” said Beetle. “De
Vitre ought to have stayed for this.”
“They’m all safe an’ to rights,” said the
officious Abraham, producing the key.
“ Rackon us’ll come in an’ hold ’em for yeou.
Hey! The cows are fair ragin’ still. Us’ll
have to run for it.”
The barn being next to the shed, the boys
could not see that stately entry. But they
heard.
“Gone an’ hided in the hay. Aie!
They’m proper afraid,” cried Abraham.
“Rout un out! Rout un out!” roared
Vidley, rattling a stick impatiently on the
root-cutter.
“Oh, my Aunt!” said Corkran, standing
on one foot.
“Shut the door. Shut the door, I tal ’ee.
Rackon us can find un in the dark. Us don’t
want un boltin’ like rabbits under our
elbows.” The big barn door closed with a
clang.
“My Gum!” said Corkran, which was
always his War oath in time of action. He
dropped down and was gone for perhaps
twenty seconds.
“And that's all right,” he said, returning
at a gentle saunter.
170 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘"Hwatt?” McTurk almost shrieked, for
Corkran, in the shed below, waved a large
key.
‘‘Stalks! Frabjous Stalks! Bottled ’em!
all four!” was the reply, and Beetle fell on
his bosom. “Yiss. They’m so’s to say,
like, locked up. If you’re goin’ to laugh.
Beetle, I shall have to kick you again.”
“But I must!” Beetle was blackening
with suppressed mirth.
“You won’t do it here, then.” He
thrust the already limp Beetle through the
cartshed window. It sobered him; one can¬
not laugh on a bed of nettles. Then Cork¬
ran stepped on his prostrate carcass, and
McTurk followed, just as Beetle would have
risen; so he was upset, and the nettles
painted on his cheek a likeness of hideous
eruptions.
“’Thought that ’ud cure you,” said Cork¬
ran, with a sniff.
Beetle rubbed his face desperately with
dock-leaves, and said nothing. All desire to
laugh had gone from him. They entered
the lane.
Then a clamour broke from the barn — a
compound noise of horse-like kicks, shaking
of door-panels, and fivefold yells.
‘‘STALKY’’ 171
“They’ve found it out,” said Corkran.
“How strange!” He sniffed again.
“Let ’em,” said Beetle. “No one can
hear ’em. Come on up to Coll.”
“What a brute you are, Beetle! You
only think of your beastly self. Those cows
want milkin’. Poor dears ! Hear ’em low,”
said McTurk.
“Go back and milk ’em yourself, then.”
Beetle danced with pain. “We shall miss
call-over, hangin’ about like this; an’ I’ve
got two black marks this week already.”
“Then you’ll have fatigue-drill on Mon¬
day,” said Corkran. “Come to think of it,
I’ve got two black marks aussi. Hm!
This is serious. This is hefty serious.”
“I told you,” said Beetle, with vindictive
triumph. “An’ we want to go out after
that hawk’s nest on Monday. We shall
be swottin’ dum-bells, though. All your
fault. If we’d bunked with De Vitre at
first - ”
Corkran paused between the hedgerows.
“Hold on a shake an’ don’t burble. Keep
your eye on Uncle. Do you know, I believe
someone’s shut up in that barn. I think we
ought to go and see.”
“Don’t be a giddy idiot. Come on up to
172 LAND AND SEA TALES
Coll.” But Corkran took no notice of Beetle.
He retraced his steps to the head of the
lane, and, lifting up his voice, cried as in
bewilderment, “ Hullo Who’s there.?
What’s that row about? Who are you?”
“Oh, Peter!” said Beetle, skipping, and
forgetting his anguish in this new develop¬
ment.
“Hoi! Hoi! ’Ere! Let us out!” The
answers came muffled and hollow from the
black bulk of the barn, with renewed thun¬
ders on the door.
“Now play up,” said Corkran. “Turkey,
you keep the cows busy. ’Member that
we’ve just discovered ’em. We don’t know
anything. Be polite. Beetle.”
They picked their way over the muck and
held speech through a crack by the door-
hinge. Three more genuinely surprised boys
the steady rain never fell upon. And they
were so difficult to enlighten. They had to
be told again and again by the captives
within.
“We’ve been ’ere for hours an’ hours.”
That was Toowey. “An’ the cows to milk,
an’ all.” That was Vidley. “The door she
blewed against us an’ jammed herself.”
That was Abraham.
“STALKY”
173
“Yes, we can see that. It’s jammed on
this side,” said Corkran. ‘‘How careless
you chaps are!”
“Oppenun. Oppen un. Bash her oppen
with a rock, young gen’elmen! The cows
are milk-heated an’ ragin’. Haven’t you
boys no sense?”
Seeing that McTurk from time to time
tweaked the cattle into renewed caperings,
it was quite possible that the boys had some
knowledge of a sort. But Mr. Vidley was
rude. They told him so through the door,
professing only now to recognize his voice.
“Humour un if ’e can. I paid seven-an’-
six for the padlock,” said Toowey. “Niver
mind him, ’Tes only old Vidley.”
“Be yeou gwaine to stay a prisoneer an’
captive for the sake of a lock, Toowey?
I’m shaamed of ’ee. Rowt un oppen,
young gen’elmen! ’Twas a God’s own
mercy yeou heard us. Toowey, yeou’m a
horned miser.”
“ It’ll be a long job,” said Corkran. “ Look
here. It’s near our call-over. If we stay
to help you we’ll miss it. We’ve come miles
out of our way already — after you.”
“Tell' yeour master, then, what keeped
’ee — an arrand o’ mercy, laike. I’ll tal un
174 land and sea TALES
tu when I bring the milk to-morrow/’ said
Toowey.
‘‘That’s no good,” said Corkran; “we
may be licked twice over by then. You’ll
have to give us a letter.” McTurk, backed
against the barn-wall, was firing steadily
and accurately into the brown of the herd.
“ Yiss, yiss. Come down to my house. My
missus shall write ’ee a beauty, young
gen’elmen. She makes out the bills. I’ll
give ’ee just such a letter o’ racommenda-
tion as I ’d give to my own son, if only yeou
can humour the lock!”
“Niver mind the lock,” Vidley wailed.
“Let me get to me pore cows, ’fore they’m
dead.”
They went to work with ostentatious
rattlings and wrenchings, and a good deal
of the by-play that Corkran always loved.
At last — the noise of unlocking was covered
by some fancy hammering with a young
boulder — the door swung open and the
captives marched out.
“Hurry up. Mister Toowey,” said Cork¬
ran; “we ought to be getting back. Will
you give us that note, please.^”
“Some of yeou young gentlemen was
drivin’ my cattle off the Burrowses,” said
“STALKY”
I7S
Vidley. “I give Ye fair warnin’, I’ll tell
yeour masters. I know yeou!” He glared
at Corkran with malignant recognition.
McTurk looked him over from head to
foot. “Oh, it’s only old Vidley. Drunk
again, I suppose. Well, we can’t help that.
Come on. Mister Toowey. We’ll go to your
house.”
“Drunk, am li I’ll drunk ’ee! How do
I know yeou bain’t the same lot.^ Abram,
did ’ee take their names an’ numbers.?”
“What is he ravin’ about.?” said Beetle.
“Can’t you see that if we’d taken your
beastly cattle we shouldn’t be hanging
round your beastly barn. ’Pon my Sam, you
Burrows guv’nors haven’t any sense - ”
“Let alone gratitude,” said Corkran. “I
suppose he was drunk, Mister Toowey;
an’ you locked him in the barn to get sober.
Shockin’! Oh, shockin’!”
Vidley denied the charge in language that
the boys’ mothers would have wept to hear.
“Well, go and look after your cows,
then,” said McTurk. “Don’t stand there
cursin’ us because we’ve been kind enough
to help you out of a scrape. Why on earth
weren’t your cows milked before.? Yourt
no farmer. It’s long past milkin’. No
176 LAND AND SEA TALES
wonder theyTe half crazy. Disreputable
old bog-trotter, you are. Brush your hair,
sir. ... I beg your pardon. Mister
Toowey. ’Hope we’re not keeping you.”
They left Vidley dancing on the muck-
heap, amid the cows, and devoted them¬
selves to propitiating Mr. Toowey on their
way to his house. Exercise had made them
hungry; hunger is the mother of good man¬
ners; and they won golden opinions from
Mrs. Toowey.
* * *
“Three-quarters of an hour late for Call-
over, and fifteen minutes late for Lock-up,”
said Foxy, the school Sergeant, crisply. He
was waiting for them at the head of the
corridor. “Report to your housemaster,
please — an’ a nice mess you’re in, young
gentlemen.”
“Quite right. Foxy. Strict attention to
dooty does it,” said Corkran. “Now where,
if we asked you, would you say that ' his
honour Mister Prout might, at this moment
of time, be found prouting — eh.f^”
“In ’is study — as usual. Mister Corkran.
He took Call-over.”
“Hurrah! Luck’s with us all the way.
‘‘STALKY’’ 177
Don’t blub, Foxy. I’m afraid you don’t
catch us this time.”
“We went up to change, sir, before cornin’
to you. That made us a little late, sir. We
weren’t really very late. We were detained
—by a - ”
“An errand of mercy,” said Beetle, and
they laid Mrs. Toowey’s laboriously written
note before him. “We thought you’d pre¬
fer a letter, sir. Toowey got himself locked
into a barn, and we heard him shouting — it’s
Toowey who brings the Coll, milk, sir — and
we went to let him out.”
“There were ever so many cows waiting
to be milked,” said McTurk; “and of course,
he couldn’t get at them, sir. They said
the door had jammed. There’s his note,
• if
sir.
Mr. Prout read it over thrice. It was per¬
fectly unimpeachable; but it said nothing of
a large tea supplied by Mrs. Toowey.
“Well, I don’t like your getting mixed up
with farmers and potwallopers. Of course
you will not pay any more — er — visits to the
Tooweys,” said he.
“Of course not, sir. It was really on
178 LAND AND SEA TALES
account of the cows, sir,” replied McTurk,
glowing with philanthropy.
‘‘And you came straight back?”
“We ran nearly all the way from the
Cattlegate,” said Corkran, carefully de¬
veloping the unessential. “ That’s one mile,
sir. Of course, we had to get the note from
Toowey first.”
“But it was because we went to change —
we were rather wet, sir — that we were really
late. After we’d reported ourselves to the
Sergeant, sir, and he knew we were in Coll.,
we didn’t like to come to your study all
dirty.” Sweeter than honey was the voice
of Beetle.
“Very good. Don’t let it happen again.”
Their housemaster learned to know them
better in later years.
They entered — not to say swaggered —
into Number Nine form-room, where De
Vitre, Orrin, Parsons, and Howlett, before
the fire, were still telling their adventures
to admiring associates. The four rose as
one boy.
“What happened to you? We just saved
Call-over. Did you stay on? Tell us!
Tell us!”
The three smiled pensively. They were
“STALKY” 179
not distinguished for telling more than was
necessary.
“Oh, we stayed on a bit and then we
came away,” said McTurk. “That’s all.”
“You scab! You might tell a chap any¬
how.”
“’Think so.^ Well, that’s awfully good
of you, De Vitre. ’Pon my sainted Sam,
that’s awfully good of you,” said Corkran,
shouldering into the centre of the warmth
and toasting one slippered foot before the
blaze. “So you really think we might tell
you.?”
They stared at the coals and shook with
deep, delicious chuckles.
“My Hat! We were stalky,” said Mc¬
Turk. “I swear we were about as stalky as
they make ’em. Weren’t we?”
“It was a frabjous Stalk,” said Beetle.
“ ’Much too good to tell you brutes, though.”
The form wriggled under the insult, but
made no motion to avenge it. After all,
on De Vitre’s showing, the three had saved
the raiders from at least a public licking.
“It wasn’t half bad,” said Corkran.
“Stalky is the word.”
“ You were the really stalky one,” said
McTurk, one contemptuous shoulder turned
i8o LAND AND SEA TALES
to a listening world. ‘‘By Gum! you were
stalky.”
Corkran accepted the compliment and
the name together. “Yes,” said he; “keep
your eye on your Uncle Stalky an’ he’ll
pull you through.”
“Well, you needn’t gloat so,” said De
Vitre, viciously; “you look like a stuffed
cat.”
Corkran, henceforth known as Stalky,
took not the slightest notice, but smiled
dreamily.
“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he mur¬
mured. “Your Uncle Stalky — a doocid
good name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end
of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I swear
he is. De Vitre, you’re an ass — a putrid
ass.”
De Vitre would have denied this but for
the assenting murmurs from Parsons and
Orrin.
“You needn’t rub it in, then.”
“But I do. I does. You are such a
woppin’ ass. D’you know it.^ Think over
it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige
me by thinkin’ of it every half hour till
further notice. Gummy! an ass you
are! But your Uncle Stalky” — he picked
“STALKY’’
i8r
up the form-room poker and beat it against
the mantelpiece — “is a Great Man!”
“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk,
who had fought under that general.
“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man,
De Vitre.? Speak the truth, you fat¬
headed old impostor.”
“Yes,” said De Vitre, deserted by all his
band. “I — I suppose he is.”
“’Mustn’t suppose. Is he.^”
“Well, he is.”
“A Great Man.^”
“A Great Man. Now won’t you tell us
said De Vitre pleadingly.
“Not by a heap,” said ‘‘Stalky” Corkran.
Therefore the tale has stayed untold till
to-day.
THE HOUR OF THE ANGEL'
SOONER or late — in earnest or in jest —
(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriers
Hour
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
Of our sole unbacked competence and
power
Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment — or beyond. But here we
have
Prepared long since our garland or our
grave.
For, at that hour, the sum of all our past.
Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be
cast
In one addition, be it more or less.
And as that reading runs so shall we do;
Meeting, astounded, victory at the last.
Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to
save!
^Ithuriel was that Archangel whose spear had the magic property
of showing everyone exactly and truthfully what he was.
182
THE BURNING OF THE
“SARAH SANDS”
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THE BURNING OF THE
“SARAH SANDS”
Men have sailed the seas for so many years, and have
there done such amazing things in the face of danger,
difficulty and death, that no one tale of heroism exists
which cannot he equalled by at least scores of others.
But since the behaviour of bodies of untried men under
trying circumstances is always interesting, and since I
have been put in possession of some facts not very gener¬
ally known, I am trying to tell again the old story of
the Sarah Sands, as an example of long-drawn-out and
undef eatable courage and cool-headedness.
SHE was a small fourmasted, iron-built
screw-steamer of eleven hundred tons,
chartered to take out troops to India. That
was in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny,
when anything that could sail or steer was
in great demand; for troops were being
thrown into the country as fast as circum¬
stances allowed — which was not very fast.
Among the regiments sent out was the
54th of the Line, now the Second Battalion
of the Dorset Regiment — a good corps,
about a hundred years old, with a very fair
185
1 86 LAND AND SEA TALES
record of service, but in no special way
differing, so far as one could see, from
many other regiments. It was despatched
in three ships. The Head-quarters — that is
to say, the Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regi¬
mental books, pay-chest. Band and Colours,
which last represent the very soul of a
Battalion — and some fourteen officers, three
hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and
perhaps a dozen women, left Portsmouth on
the 15th of August all packed tight in the
Sarah Sands,
Her crew, with the exception of the engi¬
neers and firemen, seem to have been for¬
eigners and pier-head jumpers picked up
at the last minute. They turned out bad,
lazy and insubordinate.
The accommodation for the troops was
generously described as ‘‘inferior,’^ and
what men called “inferior” in 1857 would
now be called unspeakable. Nor, in spite
of the urgent need, was there any great
hurry about the Sarah Sands, She took
two long months to reach Capetown, and
she stayed there five days to coal, leaving
on the 20th of October. By this time, the
crew were all but openly mutinous, and
the troops, who must have picked up a little
THE ‘^SARAH SANDS’’ 187
seamanship, had to work the ship out of
harbour.
On the 7th of November, nearly three
weeks later, a squall struck her and carried
away her foremast; and it is to be presumed
that the troops turned to and cleared away
the wreckage. On the nth of November
the real trouble began, for, in the afternoon
of that day, ninety days out from Ports¬
mouth, a party of soldiers working in the
hold saw smoke coming up from the after¬
hatch. They were then, maybe, within a
thousand miles of the Island of Mauritius, in
half a gale and a sea full of sharks.
Captain Castles, the master, promptly
lowered and provisioned the boats; got
them over-side with some difficulty and put
the women into them. Some of the sailors
— the engineers, the firemen and a few others
behaved well — jumped into the long-boat,
lowered it and kept well away from the
ship. They knew she carried two maga¬
zines full of cartridges, and were taking no
chances.
The troops, on the other hand, did not
make any fuss, but under their officers’
orders cleared out the starboard or right-
hand magazine, while volunteers tried to
i88 LAND AND SEA TALES
save the Regimental Colours. These stood
at the end of the saloon, probably clamped
against the partition behind the Captain’s
chair, and the saloon was full of smoke.
Two lieutenants made a dash thither but
were nearly suffocated. A ship’s quarter¬
master — Richard Richmond was his name
— put a wet cloth over his face, managed to
tear down the Colours, and then fainted.
A private — and his name was W. Wiles —
dragged out both Richmond and the Col¬
ours, and the two men dropped senseless on
the deck while the troops cheered. That,
at least, was a good beginning; for, as I have
said, the Colours are the soul of every body
of men who fight or work under them.
The saloon must have been one of the
narrow, cabin-lined, old-fashioned “cud¬
dies,” placed above the screw, and all the
fire was in the stern of the ship, behind the
engine-room. It was blazing very close to
the port or left-hand magazine, and, as an
explosion there would have blown the
Sarah Sands out like a squib they called for
more volunteers, and one of the lieutenants
who had been choked in the saloon recovered,
went down first and passed up a barrel of
ammunition, which was at once hove over-
THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS’’ 189
board. After this example, work went on
with regularity.
When the men taking out the ammunition
fainted, as they did fairly often, they pulled
them up with ropes. Those who did not
faint, grabbed what explosives they could
feel or handle in the smother, and brought
them up, and an official and serene
quartermaster-sergeant stood on the hatch
and jotted down the number of barrels
so retrieved in his notebook, as they were
thrown into the sea. They pulled out all
except two barrels which slid from the arms
of a fainting man — there was a fair amount
of fainting that evening — and rolled out of
reach. Besides these, there were another
couple of barrels of signalling powder for
the ship’s use; but this the troops did not
know, and were the more comfortable for
their ignorance.
Then the flames broke through the after¬
deck, the light attracting shoals of sharks,
and the mizzen-mast — the farthest aft of all
the masts — flared up and went over-side
with a crash. This would have veered the
stern of the ship-head to the wind, in which
case the flames must have swept forward;
but a man with a hatchet — his name is lost
190 LAND AND SEA TALES
— ran along the bulwarks and cut the wreck
clear, while the boat full of women surged
and rocked at a safe distance, and the sharks
tried to upset it with their tails.
A Captain of the 54th — he was a jovial
soul, and made jokes throughout the strug¬
gle — headed a party of men to cut away the
bridge, the deck-cabins, and everything else
that was inflammable — this in case of the
flames sweeping forward again — while a
provident lieutenant, with some more troops,
lashed spars and things together for a raft,
and other gangs pumped water desperately
on to what was left of the saloon and the
magazines.
One record says quaintly: ‘‘It was neces¬
sary to make some deviation from the usual
military evolutions while the flames were in
progress. The men formed in sections, coun¬
termarched round the forward part of the
ship, which may perhaps be better under¬
stood when it is stated that those with their
faces to the after part where the fire raged
were on their way to relieve their comrades
who had been working below. Those pro¬
ceeding ‘forward’ were going to recruit
their exhausted strength and prepare for
another attack when it came to their turn.”
THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS”
191
No one seemed to have much hopes of
saving the ship so long as the last of the
powder was unaccounted for. Indeed, Cap¬
tain Castles told an officer of the 54th that
the game was up, and the officer replied,
“We’ll fight till we’re driven overboard.”
It seemed he would be taken at his word,
for just then the signalling powder and the
ammunition-casks went up, and the ship
seen from midships aft looked like one
floating volcano.
The cartridges spluttered like crackers,
and cabin doors and timbers were shot up
all over the deck, and two or three men were
hurt. But — this is not in any official record
— ^just after the roar of it, when her stern was
dipping deadlily, and all believed the Sarah
Sands was settling for her last lurch, some
merry jester of the 54th cried, “Lights out,”
and the jovial captain shouted back, “All
right! We’ll keep the old woman afloat
yet.” Not one man of the troops made
any attempt to get on to the rafts; and
when they found the ship was still float¬
ing they all went back to work double
tides.
At this point in the story we come across
Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, who, like
192 LAND AND SEA TALES
most of his countrymen, had been holding
his trump-card in reserve. He knew the
Sarah Sands was built with a water-tight
bulkhead behind the engine-room and the
coalbunkers; and he proposed to cut through
the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also,
he pointed out that it would be well to re¬
move the coal in the bunkers, as the bulk¬
head behind was almost red-hot, and the coal
was catching light.
So volunteers dropped into the bunkers,
each man for the minute or two he could
endure it, and shovelled away the singeing,
fuming fuel, and other volunteers were low¬
ered into the bonfire aft, and when they
could throw no more water on it they were
pulled up half roasted.
Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though
every particle of wood in the after part of
her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung
over the red-hot iron beams and ties, and the
sea for miles about looked like blood under
the glare, as they pumped and passed water
in buckets, flooding the stern, sluicing the
engine-room bulkhead and damping the coal
beyond it all through the long night. The
very sides of the ship were red-hot, so that
they wondered when her plates would buckle
THE SARAH SANDS’’ 193
and wrench out the rivets and let the whole
affair down to the sharks.
The foremast had carried away on the
squall of the 7th of November; the mizzen¬
mast, as you know, had gone in the fire;
the main-mast, though wrapped round with
wet blankets, was alight, and ever3rthing
abaft the main-mast was one red furnace.
There was the constant danger of the ship,
now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling
off before the heavy wind, and leading the
flames forward again. So they hailed the
boats to tow and hold her head to wind;
but only the gig obeyed the order. The
others had all they could do to keep afloat;
one of them had been swamped, though all
her people were saved; and as for the long¬
boat full of mutinous seamen, she behaved
infamously. One record says that ‘‘She not
only held aloof, but consigned the ship and
all she carried to perdition.” So the Sarah
Sands fought for her own life alone, with
the sharks in attendance.
About three on the morning of the 12th
of November, pumping, bucketing, sluicing
and damping, they began to hope that they
had bested the fire. By nine o’clock they
saw steam coming up from her insides in-
194 land and sea TALES
stead of smoke, and at mid-day they called
in the boats and took stock of the damage.
From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing
that you could call ship except just the
mere shell of her. It was all one steaming
heap of scrap-iron with twenty feet of
black, greasy water flooding across the bent
and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all
four huge water-tanks rolled to and fro,
thundering against the naked sides.
Moreover, — this they could not see till
things had cooled down — the powder ex¬
plosions had blown a hole right through her
port quarter, and every time she rolled the
sea came in there green. Of the four masts
only one was left; and the rudder-head
stuck up all bald, black and horrible among
the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photo¬
graph of the wreck looks exactly like that
of a gutted theatre after the flames and the
firemen have done their worst.
They spent the whole of the 12th of No¬
vember pumping water out as zealously -as
they had pumped it in. They lashed up the
loose, charging tanks as soon as they were
cool enough to touch. They plugged the
hole at the stern with hammocks, sails, and
planks, and a sail over all. Then they
THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS’’
195
rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the
rudder-head. Six men sat on planks on one
side and six at the other over the empty pit
beneath, hauling on to the bar with ropes
and letting go as they were told. That
made the best steering-gear that they could
devise.
On the 13th of November, still pumping,
they spread one sail on their solitary mast —
it was lucky that the Sarah Sands had
started with four of them — and took advan¬
tage of the trade winds to make for Mauri¬
tius. Captain Castles, with one chart and
one compass, lived in a tent where some
cabins had once been; and at the end of
twelve more days he sighted land. Their
average run was about four knots an hour;
and, it is no wonder that as soon as they
were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer,
the Scotch engineer, wished to start his
engines and enter port professionally. The
troops looked down into the black hollow of
the ship when the shaft made its first revolu¬
tion, shaking the hull horribly; and if you
can realize what it means to be able to see a
naked screw-shaft at work from the upper
deck of a liner, you can realize what had
happened to the Sarah Sands. They waited
196 LAND AND SEA TALES
outside Port Louis for the daylight, and
were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef.
Then the gutted, empty steamer came in
— very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred
that they hardly dared to take them off,
and very hungry; but without having lost
one single life. Port Louis gave them all a
public banquet in the market place, and the
French inhabitants were fascinatingly polite
as only the French can be.
But the records say nothing of what befell
the sailors who “consigned the ship to per¬
dition.” One account merely hints that
“this was no time for retribution”; but the
troops probably administered their own jus¬
tice during the twelve days’ limp to port.
The men who were berthed aft, the officers
and the women, lost everything they had;
and the companies berthed forward lent
them clothes and canvas to make some sort
of raiment.
On the 20th of December they were all
re-embarked on the Clarendon. It was poor
accommodation for heroes. She had been
condemned as a coolie-ship, was full of cen¬
tipedes and other animals picked up in the
Brazil trade; her engines broke down fre¬
quently; and her captain died of exposure
THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS”
197
and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was
the 25th of January before she reached the
mouth of the Hugh.
By this time — many of the men probably
considered this quite as serious as the fire —
the troops were out of tobacco, and when
they came across the American ship Hamlet,
Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the
way up the river to Calcutta, the officers
rowed over to ask if there was any tobacco
for sale. They told the skipper the history
of their adventures, and he said: “Well,
Tm glad youVe come to me, because I have
some tobacco. How many are you?”
“Three hundred men,” said the officers.
Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four
hundred pounds of best Cavendish as well
as one thousand Manilla cigars for the
officers, and refused to take payment on the
grounds that Americans did not accept any¬
thing from shipwrecked people. They
were not shipwrecked at the time, but evi¬
dently they had been shipwrecked quite
enough for Captain Lecran, because when
they rowed back a second time and insisted
on paying, he only gave them grog, “which,”
says the record, “caused it to be dark when
we returned to our ship.” After this “our
198 LAND AND SEA TALES
band played ‘ Yankee-Doodle/ blue lights
were burned, the signal-gun fired’’ — that
must have been a lively evening at Ked¬
geree — ‘^and everything in our power was
had recourse to so as to convey to our Amer¬
ican cousins our appreciation of their kind¬
ness.”
Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief is¬
sued a general order to be read at the head
of every regiment in the Army. He was
pleased to observe that ‘The behaviour of
the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy,
and by its result must render manifest to
all the advantage of subordination and strict
obedience to orders under the most alarming
and dangerous circumstances in which sol¬
diers can be placed.”
This seems to be the moral of the tale.
THE LAST LAP
Where the mired and sulky oxen wait,
And it looks as though we might wait for
ever,
How do we know that the floods abate ?
There is no change in the current’s brawl¬
ing—
Louder and harsher the freshet scolds;
Yet we can feel she is falling, falling.
And the more she threatens the less she
holds.
Down to the drift, with no word spoken.
The wheel-chained wagons slither and
slue.
Steady! The back of the worst is broken.
And — lash your leaders! — we’re through
— we’re through!
How do we know, when the port-fog holds us
Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier.
And the week-long summer smother enfolds
us —
How do we know it is going to clear.?
199
200
LAND AND SEA TALES
There is no break in the blind-fold weather,
But, one and another, around the bay.
The unseen capstans clink together.
Getting ready to up and away.
A pennon whimpers — the breeze has found
us —
A headsail jumps through the thinning
haze.
The whole hull follows, till — broad around
us —
The clean-swept ocean says: — ‘‘Go your
I > j
ways!
How do we know, when the long fight rages.
On the old, stale front that we cannot
shake;
And it looks as though we were locked for
ages.
How do we know they are going to break
There is no lull in the level firing.
Nothing has shifted except the sun.
Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring.
Yet we can tell they are ripe to run.
Something wavers, and, while we wonder.
Their center trenches are emptying out.
And, before their useless flanks go under.
Our guns have pounded retreat to rout !
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES
This tale was written several years before the War, as
you can see for yourselves. It is founded on fact, and
it is meant to show that one ought to try to recognize
facts, even when they are unpleasant and inconveni¬
ent*
The long shed of the Village Rifle Club
reeked with the oniony smell of smoke¬
less powder, machine-oil, and creosote from
the stop-butt, as man after man laid himself
down and fired at the miniature target sixty
feet away. The Instructor’s voice echoed
under the corrugated iron roof.
“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking
your shoulder won’t help the bullet. . . .
Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the
left. . . . Hold your breath when the
sights come on. . . . Fenwick, was
that a bull.f^ Then it’s only a fluke, for
your last at two o’clock was an outer. You
don’t know where you’re shooting.”
“I call this monotonous,” said Boy Jones,
who had been brought by a friend to look at
the show. “Where does the fun come in?’^
203
204
LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Would you like to try a shot?’’ the
Instructor asked.
“Oh — er — thanks,” said Jones. “I’ve
shot with a shot-gun, of course, but this” —
he looked at the miniature rifle — “this
isn’t like a shot-gun, is it?”
“Not in the least,” said the Friend. The
Instructor passed Boy Jones a cartridge.
The squad ceased firing and stared. Boy
Jones reddened and fumbled.
“Hi! The beastly thing has slipped
somehow!” he cried. The tiny twenty-two
cartridge had dropped into the magazine-
slot and stuck there, caught by the rim.
The muzzle travelled vaguely round the
horizon. The squad with one accord sat
down on the dusty cement floor.
“Lend him a hair-pin,” whispered the
jobbing gardener.
“Muzzle up, please,” said the Instructor
(it was drooping towards the men on the
floor). “I’ll load for you. Now — keep
her pointed towards the target — you’re sup¬
posed to be firing at two hundred yards.
Have you set your sights? Never mind,
I’ll set ’em. Please don’t touch the trigger
till you shoot.”
Boy Jones was glistening at the edges as
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 205
the Instructor swung him in the direction of
the little targets fifty feet away. ‘^Take a
fine sight! The bull’s eye should be just
sitting on the top of the fore-sight,” the
Instructor cautioned. “Ah!”
Boy Jones, with a grunt and a jerk of the
shoulder, pulled the trigger. The right-
hand window of the shed, six feet above the
target, starred and cracked.
The boy who cleans the knives at the
Vicarage buried his face in his hands;
Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, tied up
his bootlace; the Fellow of the Royal Geo¬
graphical Society looked at the roof; the
village barber whistled softly. When one is
twenty-two years old, and weighs twelve-
stone-eight in hard condition, one does not
approve of any game that one cannot play
very well.
“I call this silly piffle,” said Boy Jones,
wiping his face.
“Oh, not so bad as that,” said the In¬
structor. “ We’ve all got to begin somehow.
Try another.?” But Boy Jones was not
practising any more that afternoon. He
seemed to need soothing.
“Come over to the big range,” said the
Friend. “You’ll see the finished article at
2o6 land and sea tales
work down there. This is only for boys
and beginners.’’
A knot of village lads from twelve to
sixteen were scuffling for places on the
shooting-mat as Boy Jones left the shed.
On his way to the range, across the windy
Downs, he preserved a silence foreign to his
sunny nature. Jevons, the bricklayer’s as¬
sistant, and the F. R. G. S. trotted past
him — riffes at the carry.
‘‘Awkward wind,” said Jevons. “Fish¬
tail!”
“What’s a fishtail.^” said Boy Jones.
“Oh! It means a fishy, tricky sort of a
wind,” said the Friend. A shift in the un¬
easy north-east breeze brought them the
far-away sob of a service rifie.
“For once in your young life,” the Friend
went on, “you’re going to attend a game
you do not understand.”
“If you mean I’m expected to make an
ass of myself again - ” Boy Jones paused.
“Don’t worry! By this time I fancy
Jevons will have told the Sergeant all about
your performance in the shed just now.
You won’t be pressed to shoot.”
A long sweep of bare land opened before
them. The thump of occasional shots
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 207
grew clearer, and Boy Jones pricked his
ears.
“What’s that unholy whine and whop?”
he asked in a lull of the wind.
“The whine is the bullet going across the
valley. The whop is when it hits the target
— that white shutter thing sliding up and
down against the hillside. Those men lying
down yonder are shooting at five hundred
yards. We’ll look at ’em,” said the Friend.
“This would make a thundering good
golf-links,” said Boy Jones, striding over
the short, clean turf. “Not a bad lie in
miles of it.”
“Yes, wouldn’t it?” the Friend replied.
“It would be even prettier as a croquet-
lawn or a basket-ball pitch. Just the place
for a picnic too. Unluckily, it’s a rifle-
range.”
Boy Jones looked doubtful, but said
nothing till they reached the five-hundred-
yard butt. The Sergeant, on his stomach,
binoculars to his eye, nodded, but not at the
visitors. “Where did you sight, Walters?”
he said.
“Nine o’clock — edge of the target,” was
the reply from a fat, blue man in a bowler
hat, his trousers rucked half-way to his
208 LAND AND SEA TALES
knees. ^‘The wind’s rotten bad down
there!” He pointed towards the stiff¬
tailed wind-flags that stuck out at all sorts
of angles as the eddy round the shoulder
of the Down caught them.
‘Xet me try one,” the Sergeant said, and
reached behind him for a rifle.
‘‘Hold on!” said the F. R. G. S. “That’s
Number Six. She throws high.”
“She’s my pet,” said Jevons, holding out
his hand for it. “Take Number Nine,
Sergeant.”
“Rifles are like bats, you know,” the
Friend explained. “They differ a lot.”
The Sergeant sighted.
“He holds it steady enough,” said Boy
Jones.
“He mostly does,” said the Friend. “If
you watch that white disc come up you’ll
know it’s a bull.”
“Not much of one,” said the Sergeant.
“Too low — too far right. I gave her all
the allowance I dared, too. That wind’s
funnelling badly in the valley. Give your
wind-sight another three degrees, Walters.”
The fat man’s big fingers delicately ad¬
justed the lateral sight. He had been
firing till then by the light of his trained
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 209
judgment, but some of the rifles were fitted
with wind-gauges, and he wished to test
one.
‘‘What’s he doing that for?” said Boy
Jones.
“You wouldn’t understand,” said the
Friend. “But take a squint along this
rifle, and see what a bull looks like at five
hundred yards. It isn’t loaded, but don’t
point it at the pit of my stomach.”
“Dash it all! I didn’t mean to!” said
Boy Jones.
“None of ’em mean it,” the Friend re¬
plied. “That’s how all the murders are
done. Don’t play with the bolt. Merely
look along the sights. It isn’t much of a
mark, is it?”
“No, by Jove!” said Jones, and gazed
with reverence at Walters, who announced
before the marker had signalled his last
shot that it was a likely heifer. (Walters
was a butcher by profession.) A well-
centred bull it proved to be.
“Now how the deuce did he do it?” said
Boy Jones.
“By practice — first in the shed at two
hundred yards. We’ve five or six as good
as him,” said the Friend. “But he’s not
210
LAND AND SEA TALES
much of a snap-shooter when it comes to
potting at dummy heads and shoulders ex¬
posed for five seconds. Jevons is our man
then.’’
‘‘Ah! talking of snap-shooting!” said the
Sergeant, and — while Jevons fired his seven
shots — delivered Boy Jones a curious little
lecture on the advantages of the foggy
English climate, the value of enclosed land
for warfare, and the possibilities of well-
directed small-arm fire wiping up — “spray¬
ing down” was his word — artillery, even in
position.
“ Well, I’ve got to go on and build houses,”
said Jevons. “Twenty-six is my score-
card — sign please. Sergeant He rose,
dusted his knees, and moved off. His place
was taken by a dark, cat-footed Coastguard,
firing for the love of the game. He only
ran to three cartridges, which he placed —
magpie, five o’clock; inner, three o’clock;
and bull. “Cordery don’t take anything
on trust,” said the Sergeant. “He feels
his way in to the bull every time. I like it.
It’s more rational.”
While the F. R. G. S. was explaining to
Boy Jones that the rotation of the earth on
her axis affected a bullet to the extent of one
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 21 1
yard in a thousand, a batch of six lads can¬
tered over the hill.
“We’re the new two-hundred-ers,” they
shouted.
“I know it,” said the Sergeant. “Pick
up the cartridge-cases; take my mackintosh
and bag, and come on down to the two
hundred range, quietly.”
There was no need for the last caution.
The boys picked up the things and swung
off in couples — scout fashion.
“They are the survivors,” the Friend ex¬
plained, “of the boys you saw just now.
They’ve passed their miniature rifle tests,
and are supposed to be fit to fire in the open.”
“And are they.^” said Boy Jones, edging
away from the F. R. G. S., who was talk¬
ing about “jump” and “flip” in rifle¬
shooting.
“We’ll see,” said the Sergeant. “This
wind ought to test ’em!”
Down in the hollow it rushed like a
boulder-choked river, driving quick clouds
across the sun: so that one minute, the
eight-inch Bisley bull leaped forth like a
headlight, and the next shrunk back into
the grey-green grass of the butt like an
engine backing up the line.
212 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Look here!” said the Sergeant, as the
boys dropped into their places at the firing-
point. “I warn you it’s a three-foot wind
on the target, and freshening. You’ll get
no two shots alike. Any boy that thinks he
won’t do himself justice can wait for a
better day.”
Nothing moved except one grin from
face to face.
“No,” said the Sergeant, after a pause.
“I don’t suppose a thunder-storm would
shift you young birds. Remember what
I’ve been telling you all this spring. Sight¬
ing shots, from the right!”
They went on one by one, carefully
imitating the well-observed actions of their
elders, even to the tapping of the cartridge
on the rifle-butt. They scowled and grunted
and compared notes as they set and reset
their sights. They brought up their rifles
just as shadow gave place to sun, and,
holding too long, fired when the cheating
cloud returned. It was unhappy, cold,
nose-running, eye-straining work, but they
enjoyed it passionately. At the end they
showed up their score-cards; one twenty-
seven, two twenty-fives, a twenty-four, and
two twenty-twos. Boy Jones, his hands on
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 213
his knees, had made no remark from first
to last.
“Could I have a shot.^” he began in a
strangely meek voice.
But the chilled Sergeant had already
whistled the marker out of the butt. The
wind-flags were being collected by the
youngsters, and, with a tinkle of spent
cartridge-cases returned to the Sergeant’s
bag, shooting ended.
“Not so bad,” said the Sergeant.
“One of those boys was hump-backed,”
said Boy Jones, with the healthy animal’s
horror of deformity.
“ But his shots aren’t,” said the Sergeant.
“He was the twenty-seven card. Milli¬
gan’s his name.”
“I should like to have had a shot,” Boy
Jones repeated. “Just for the fun of the
thing.”
“Well, just for the fun of the thing,” the
Friend suggested, “suppose you fill and
empty a magazine. Have you got any
dummies. Sergeant?”
The Sergeant produced a handful of
dummy cartridges from his inexhaustible
bag.
“How d’you put ’em in.?” said Boy
214
LAND AND SEA TALES
Jones, picking up a cartridge by the bullet
end with his left hand, and holding the
rifle with his right.
^‘Here, Milligan,” the Friend called.
“Fill and empty this magazine, will you,
please.^”
The cripple’s fingers flickered for an in¬
stant round the rifle-breech. The dummies
vanished clicking. He turned towards the
butt, pausing perhaps a second on each
aimed shot, ripped them all out again over
his shoulder.. Mechanically Boy Jones
caught them as they spun in the air; for he
was a good fielder.
“Time, fifteen seconds,” said the Friend.
“You try now.” Boy Jones shook his
head. “No, thanks,” he said. “This isn’t
my day out. That’s called magazine-fire, I
suppose.”
“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “but it’s more
difficult to load in the dark or in a cramped
position.”
The boys drew off, larking among them¬
selves. The others strolled homewards as
the wind freshened. Only the Sergeant,
after a word or two with the marker, struck
off up the line of firing-butts.
“There seems to be a lot in it,” said Boy
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 215
Jones, after a while, to his friend. “But
you needn’t tell me,” he went on in the
tone of one ill at ease with himself, “don’t
tell me that when the hour strikes every
man in England wouldn’t — er — rally to the
defence of his country like one man.”
“And he’d be so useful while he was
rallying, wouldn’t he.^” said the Friend
shortly. “Imagine one hundred thousand
chaps of your kidney introduced to the
rifle for the first time, all loading and firing
in your fashion! The hospitals wouldn’t
hold ’em!”
“Oh, there’d be time to get the general
hang of the thing,” said Boy Jones cheerily.
“When that hour strikes,” the Friend
replied, “it will already have struck, if you
understand. There may be a few hours —
perhaps ten or twelve — there will certainly
not be more than a day and a night allowed
us to get ready in.”
“There will be six months at least,” said
Boy Jones confidently.
“Ah, you probably read that in a paper.
I shouldn’t rely on it, if I were you. It
won’t be like a county cricket match, date
settled months in advance. By the way, are
you playing for your county this season?”
2i6 land and sea tales
Boy Jones seemed not to hear the last
question. He had taken the Friend’s rifle,
and was idly clicking the bolt.
‘‘Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said the Marker to
the Friend in an undertone, “but the
Sergeant’s tryin’ a gentleman’s new rifle at
nine hundred, and I’m waiting on for him.
If you’d like to come into the trench.^” — a
discreet wink closed the sentence.
“Thanks awfully. That ’ud be quite in¬
teresting,” said Boy Jones. The wind had
dulled a little; the sun was still strong on the
golden gorse; the Sergeant’s straight back
grew smaller and smaller as it moved
away.
“You go down this ladder,” said the
Marker. They reached the raw line of the
trench beneath the targets, the foot deep in
the flinty chalk.
“Yes, sir,” he went on, “here’s where all
the bullets ought to come. There’s four¬
teen thousand of ’em this year, somewhere
on the premises, but it don’t hinder the
rabbits from burrowing, just the same.
They know shooting’s over as well as we do.
You come here with a shot-gun, and you
won’t see a single tail; but they don’t put
’emselves out for a rifle. Look, there’s the
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 217
Parson!’' He pointed at a bold, black
rabbit sitting half-way up the butt, who
loped easily away as the Marker ran up the
large nine-hundred-yard bull. Boy Jones
stared at the bullet-splintered frame-work
of the targets, the chewed edges of the wood¬
work, and the significantly loosened earth
behind them. At last he came down, slowly
it seemed, out of the sunshine, into the
chill of the trench. The marker opened an
old cocoa box, where he kept his paste and
paper patches.
“Things get mildewy down here,” he
explained. “Mr. Warren, our sexton, says
it’s too like a grave to suit him. But as I
say, it’s twice as deep and thrice as wide
as what he makes.”
“I think it’s rather jolly,” said Boy Jones,
and looked up at the narrow strip of sky.
The Marker had quietly lowered the danger
flag. Something yowled like a cat with her
tail trod on, and a few fragments of pure
white chalk crumbled softly into the trench.
Boy Jones jumped, and flattened himself
against the inner wall of the trench. “The
Sergeant is taking a sighting-shot,” said the
Marker. “He must have hit a flint in the
grass somewhere. We can’t comb ’em all
2i8 land and sea tales
out. The noise you noticed was the nickel
envelope stripping, sir.’’
‘‘But I didn’t hear his gun go off,” said
Boy Jones.
“Not at nine hundred, with this wind,
you wouldn’t,” said the Marker. “Stand
on one side, please, sir. He’s begun.”
There was a rap overhead — a pause —
down came the creaking target, up went the
marking disc at the end of a long bamboo;
a paper patch was slapped over the bullet
hole, and the target slid up again, to be
greeted with another rap, another, and
another. The fifth differed in tone. “Here’s
a curiosity,” said the Marker, pulling down
the target. “The bullet must have rico-
chetted short of the butt, and it has key-
holed, as we say. See!” He pointed to
an ugly triangular rip and flap on the canvas
target face. “If that had been flesh and
blood, now,” he went on genially, “it would
have been just the same as running a plough
up you. . . . Now he’s on again!” The
sixth rap was as thrillingly emphatic as one
at a spiritualistic seance, but the seventh
was followed by another yaa-ow of a bullet
hitting a stone, and a tiny twisted sliver of
metal fell at Boy Jones’s rigid feet. He
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 219
touched a'nd dropped it. ‘‘Why, It’s quite
hot,” he said.
“That’s due to arrested motion,” said the
F. R. G. S. “Isn’t it a funking noise,
though.?”
A pause of several minutes followed, dur¬
ing which they could hear the wind and
the sea and the creaking of the Marker’s
braces.
“He said he’d finish off with a magazine
full,” the Marker volunteered. “I expect
he’s waiting for a lull in the wind. Ah!
here it comes!”
It came — eleven shots slammed in at
three-second intervals; a ricochet or two;
one on the right-hand of the target’s frame¬
work, which rang like a bell; a couple that
hammered the old railway ties just behind
the bull; and another that kicked a clod into
the trench, and key-holed up the target.
The others were various and scattering, but
all on the butt.
“Sergeant can do better than that,”
said the Marker critically, overhauling the
target. “It was the wind put him off,
or (he winked once again), or . . . else
he wished to show somebody something.”
“I heard ’em all hit,” said Boy Jones.
220
LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘ But I never heard the gun go off. Awful,
I call it!’’
‘‘Well,” said his friend, “it’s the kind
of bowling you’ll have to face at forty-
eight hours’ notice — if you’re lucky.”
“It’s the key-holing that I bar,” said
Boy Jones, following his own line of thought.
The Marker put up his flag and ladder, and
they climbed out of the trench into the
sunshine.
“For pity’s sake, look!” said the Marker,
and stopped. “Well, well! If I ’adn’t
seen it, I wouldn’t have credited it. You
poor little impident fool. The Sergeant
will be vexed.”
“What has happened.^” said Boy Jones,
rather shrilly.
“He’s killed the Parson, sir!” The
Marker held up the still kicking body of a
glossy black rabbit. One side of its head
was not there.
“Talk of coincidence!” the Marker went
on. “I know Sergeant ’ll pretend he aimed
for it. The poor little fool ! Jumpin ’ about
after his own businesses and thinking he
was safe; and then to have his head fair
mashed off him like this Just look at
him! Well! Well!”
THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 221
It was anything but well with Boy Jones.
He seemed sick.
* * * *
A week later the Friend nearly stepped on
him in the miniature-rifle shed. He was lying
at length on the dusty coir matting, his
trousers rucked half-way to his knees, his
sights set as for two hundred, deferentially
• asking Milligan the cripple to stand behind
him and tell him whether he was canting.
“No, you aren’t now,” said Milligan
patronizingly, “but you were.”
A DEPARTURE
SINCE first the White Horse Banner
blew free,
By Hengist’s horde unfurled,
Nothing has changed on land or sea
Of the things that steer the world.
(As it was when the long-ships scudded
through the gale
So it is where the Liners go.)
Time and Tide, they are both in a tale
“Woe to the weaker — woe!”
No charm can bridle the hard-mouthed wind
Or smooth the fretting swell.
No gift can alter the grey Sea’s mind,
But she serves the strong man well.
(As it is when her uttermost deeps are
stirred
So it is where the quicksands show,)
All the waters have but one word —
“Woe to the weaker — woe!”
222
A DEPARTURE
223
The feast is ended, the tales are told,
The dawn is overdue.
And we meet at the wharf in the whistling
cold
Where the galley waits her crew.
Out with the torches, they have flared too
long.
And bid the harpers go.
Wind and warfare have but one song —
‘‘Woe to the weaker — woe!’’
Hail to the great oars gathering way.
As the beach begins to slide!
Hail to the war-shields’ click and play
As they lift along our side!
Hail to the first wave over the bow —
Slow for the sea-stroke ! Slow !
All the benches are grunting now —
^^Woe to the weaker — woe!”
#
i
V. :
B
THE BOLD ’PRENTICE
THE BOLD ’PRENTICE
This story is very much of the same sort as An
U nqualified Pilotf^ and shows that, when any one is
really keen on his job, he will generally find some older
man who is even keener than he, who will give him help
and instruction that could not he found in a whole
library of books. Olaf Swansongs book of ^^Road-
Locos Repair or the Young Driver s Fademecome,”
was well known in the Railway sheds in its day, and was
written in the queerest English ever printed. But it
told useful facts and, as you will see, saved a train at a
pinch. It may be worth noticing that young Ottley^s
chance did not come to him till he had worked on and
among engine-repairs for some five or six years and was
well-grounded in practical knowledge of his subject.
Young Ottley’s father came to Cal¬
cutta in 1857 as fireman on the first
locomotive ever run by the D. I. R., which
was then the largest Indian railway. All
his life he spoke broad Yorkshire, but
young Ottley, being born in India, naturally
talked the clipped sing-song that is used by
the half-castes and English-speaking natives.
When he was fifteen years old the D. I. R.
took him into their service as an apprentice
in the Locomotive Repair Department of
227
228 LAND AND SEA TALES
the Ajaibpore workshops, and he became
one of a gang of three or four white men
and nine or ten natives.
There were scores of such gangs, each
with its hoisting and overhead cranes, jack-
screws, vises and lathes, as separate as
separate shops, and their work was to mend
locomotives and make the apprentices be¬
have. But the apprentices threw nuts at
one another, chalked caricatures of un¬
popular foremen on buffer-bars and dis¬
carded boilers, and did as little work as
they possibly could.
They were nearly all sons of old employes,
living with their parents in the white bunga¬
lows of Steam Road or Church Road or
Albert Road — on the broad avenues of
pounded brick bordered by palms and cro¬
tons and bougainvilleas and bamboos which
made up the railway town of Ajaibpore.
They had never seen the sea or a steamer;
half their speech was helped out with native
slang; they were all volunteers in the
D. I. R.’s Railway Corps — grey with red
facings — and their talk was exclusively
about the Company and its affairs.
They all hoped to become engine-drivers
earning six or eight hundred a year, and
THE BOLD ’PRENTICE
229
therefore they despised all mere sit-down
clerks in the Store, Audit and Traffic de¬
partments, and ducked them when they met
at the Company’s swimming baths.
There were no strikes or tie-ups on the
D. I. R. in those days, for the reason that
the ten or twelve thousand natives and two
or three thousand whites were doing their
best to turn the Company’s employment
into a caste in which their sons and rela¬
tives would be sure of positions and pen¬
sions. Everything in India crystallizes into
a caste sooner or later — the big jute and
cotton mills, the leather harness and opium
factories, the coal-mines and the dock¬
yards, and, in years to come, when India
begins to be heard from as one of the manu¬
facturing countries of the world, the labour
Unions of other lands will learn something
about the beauty of caste which will greatly
interest them.
Those were the days when the D. I. R. de¬
cided that it would be cheaper to employ
native drivers as much as possible, and the
“Sheds,” as they called the Repair Depart¬
ment, felt the change acutely; for a native
driver could misuse his engine, they said,
more curiously than any six monkeys. The
230 LAND AND SEA TALES
Company had not then standardized its
rolling-stock, and this was very good for
apprentices anxious to learn about machines,
because there were, perhaps, twenty types
of locomotives in use on the road. They
were Hawthornes; E. types; O types; out¬
side cylinders; Spaulding and Cushman
double-enders and short-run Continental-
built tank engines, and many others. But
the native drivers burned them all out
impartially, and the apprentices took to
writing remarks in Bengali on the cabs of
the repaired ones where the next driver
would be sure to see them.
Young Ottley worked at first as little as
the other apprentices, but his father, who
was then a pensioned driver, taught him a
great deal about the insides of locomotives;
and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede
who ran the Government Mail, the big
Thursday express, from Serai Rajgara to
Guldee Haut, was a great friend of the
Ottley family, and dined with them every
Friday night.
Olaf was an important person, for besides
being the best of the mail-drivers, he was
Past Master of the big railway Masonic
Lodge, “St. Duncan’s in the East,” Secre-
THE BOLD TRENTICE 231
tary of the Drivers’ Provident Association,
a Captain in the D. I. R. Volunteer Corps,
and, which he thought much more of, an
Author; for he had written a book in a lan¬
guage of his own which he insisted upon
calling English, and had printed it at his
own expense at the ticket-printing works.
Some of the copies were buff and green,
and some were pinkish and blue, and some
were yellow and brown; for Olaf did not
believe in wasting money on high-class
white paper. Wrapping-paper was good
enough for him, and besides, he said the col¬
ours rested the eyes of the reader. It was
called ‘^The Art of Road-Locos Repair or
The Young Driver’s Vademecome,” and was
dedicated in verse to a man of the name of
Swedenborg.
It covered every conceivable accident that
could happen to an engine on the road; and
gave a rough-and-ready remedy for each;
but you had to understand Olaf’s written
English, as well as all the technical talk
about engines, to make head or tail of it,
and you had also to know personally every
engine on the D. I. R., for the ‘‘Vademe¬
come” was full of what might be called
“locomotive allusions,” which concerned the
232 LAND AND SEA TALES
D. 1. R. only. Otherwise, it would, as some
great locomotive designer once said, have
been a classic and a text-book.
Olaf was immensely proud of it, and
would pin young Ottley in a corner and
make him learn whole pages — it was written
all in questions and answers — by heart.
“Never mind what she means” Olaf
would shout. “You learn her word-perfect,
and she will help you in the Sheds. I drive
the Mail, — the mail of all India, — and what
I write and say is true.”
“But I do not wish to learn the book,”
said young Ottley, who thought he saw
quite enough of locomotives in business
hours.
“You shall learn! I haf great friendship
for your father, and so I shall teach you
whether you like it or not.”
Young Ottley submitted, for he was really
fond of old Olaf, and at the end of six
months’ teaching in Olaf’s peculiar way be¬
gan to see that the “Vademecome” was a
very valuable help in the repair sheds,
when broken-down engines of a new type
came in. Olaf gave him a copy bound in
cartridge paper and hedged round the mar¬
gins with square-headed manuscript notes,
THE BOLD TRENTICE 233
each line the result of years of experience
and accidents.
“There is nothing in this book/' said Olaf,
“that I have not tried in my time, and I say
that the engine is like the body of a man.
So long as there is steam — the life, you see,
— so long, if you know how, you can make
her move a little, — so!" He waggled his
hand slowly. “Till a man is dead, or the
engine she is at the bottom of a river, you
■ can do something with her. Remember
that! I say it and I know."
He repaid young Ottley's time and atten¬
tion by using his influence to get him made
a Sergeant in his Company, and young
Ottley, being a keen Volunteer and a good
shot, stood well with the D. I. R. in the
matter of casual leave. When repairs were
light in the Sheds and the honour of the
D. I. R. was to be upheld at some far-away
station against the men of Agra or Bandikui,
the narrow-gauge railway-towns of the west,
young Ottley would contrive to get away,
and help to uphold it on the glaring dusty
rifle-ranges of those parts.
A 'prentice never dreamed of paying for
his ticket on any line in India, least of all
when he was in uniform, and young Ottley
234 land and sea TALES
was practically as free of the Indian railway
system as any member of the Supreme
Legislative Council who wore a golden Gen¬
eral Pass on his watch-chain and could ride
where he chose.
Late in September of his nineteenth year
he went north on one of his cup-hunting ex¬
cursions, elegantly and accurately dressed,
with one-eighth of one inch of white collar
showing above his grey uniform stock, and
his Martini-Henry rifle polished to match
his sergeant’s sword in the rack above him.
The rains were out, and in Bengal that
means a good deal to the railways; for the
rain falls for three months lavishly, till the
whole country is one sea, and the snakes
take refuge on the embankment, and the
racing floods puff out the brick ballast from
under the iron ties, and leave the rails hang¬
ing in graceful loops. Then the trains
run as they can, and the permanent-way
inspectors spend their nights flourishing
about in hand-carts pushed by coolies over
the dislocated metals, and everybody is cov¬
ered with the fire-red rash of prickly heat,
and loses his temper.
Young Ottley was used to these things
from birth. All he regretted was that his
THE BOLD TRENTICE 235
friends along the line were so draggled and
dripping and sulky that they could not ap¬
preciate his gorgeousness; for he considered
himself very consoling to behold when he
cocked his helmet over one eye and puffed
the rank smoke of native-made cigars
through his nostrils Until night fell he lay
out on his bunk, in his shirt sleeves, reading
the works of G. W. R. Reynolds, which were
sold on all the railway bookstalls, and dozing
at intervals.
Then he found they were changing engines
at Guldee Haut, and old Rustomjee, a Par-
see, was the new driver, with Number
Forty in hand. Young Ottley took this
opportunity to go forward and tell Rustom¬
jee exactly what they thought of him in the
Sheds, where the ’prentices had been repair¬
ing some of his carelessness in the way of a
dropped crown-sheet, the result of inatten¬
tion and bad stoking.
Rustomjee said he had bad luck with
engines, and young Ottley went back to his
carriage and slept. He was waked by a
bang, a bump, and a jar, and saw on the
opposite bunk a subaltern who was travel¬
ling north with a detachment of some
twenty English soldiers.
236 LAND AND SEA TALES
“What’s that?” said the subaltern.
“Rustomjee has blown her up, perhaps,”
said young Ottley, and dropped out into the
wet, the subaltern at his heels. They found
Rustomjee sitting by the side of the line,
nursing a scalded foot and crying aloud that
he was a dead man, while the gunner-guard
— who is a kind of extra-hand — looked re¬
spectfully at the roaring, hissing machine.
“What has happened?” said young Ott-
ley, by the light of the gunner-guard’s
lantern.
Phut gya [she has gone smash],” said
Rustomjee, still hopping.
“Without doubt; but where?”
Khuda jahnta! [God knows]. I am a
poor man. Number Forty is broke.”
Young Ottley jumped into the cab and
turned off all the steam he could find, for
there was a good deal escaping. Then he
took the lantern and dived under the drive-
wheels, where he lay face up, investigating
among spurts of hot water.
“ Doocid plucky,” said the subaltern. “ I
shouldn’t like to do that myself. What’s
gone wrong?”
“Cylinder-head blown off, coupler-rod
twisted, and several more things. She is
THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 237
very badly wrecked. Oah, yes, she is a
tottal wreck,” said young Ottley between
the spokes of the right-hand driver.
I ‘‘Awkward,” said the subaltern, turning
up his coat-collar in the wet. “What’s to
be done, then.^”
Young Ottley came out, a rich black all
over his grey uniform with the red facings,
and drummed on his teeth with his finger
nails, while the rain fell and the native
passengers shouted questions and old Rus-
tomjee told the gunner-guard to walk back
six or seven miles and wire to someone for
help.
“I cannot swim,” said the gunner-guard.
“Go and lie down.” And that, as you
might say, settled that. Besides, as far as
one could see by the light of the gunner-
guard’s lantern, all Bengal was flooded.
“Olaf Swanson will be at Serai Rajgara
with the Mail. He will be particularly an¬
gry,” said young Ottley. Then he ducked
under the engine again with a flare-lamp and
sat cross-legged, considering things and wish¬
ing he had brought his “Vademecome” in
his valise.
Number Forty was an old reconstructed
Mutiny engine, with Frenchified cock-
238 LAND AND SEA TALES
nosed cylinders and a profligate allowance of
underpinning. She had been through the
Sheds several times, and young Ottley,
though he had never worked on her, had
heard much about her, but nothing to her
credit.
‘‘You can lend me some men.?'’ he said at
last to the subaltern. “Then I think we
shall disconnect her this side, and perhaps,
notwithstanding, she will move. We will
try — eh
“Of course we will. Hi! Sergeant!”
said the subaltern. “Turn out the men
here and do what this — this officer tells
you.”
“Officer!” said one of the privates, under
his breath. “'Didn't think I'd enlisted to
serve under a Sergeant o' Volunteers.
'Ere's a 'orrible street accident. 'Looks
like mother's tea-kettle broke. What d'yer
expect us to do. Mister Civilian Sergeant.?”
Young Ottley explained his plan of cam¬
paign while he was ravaging Rustomjee's
tool-chest, and then the men crawled and
knelt and levered and pushed and hauled
and turned spanners under the engine, as
young Ottley told them. What he wanted
was to disconnect the right cylinder alto-
THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 239
4
gether, and get off a badly twisted coupler-
rod. Practically Number Forty’s right side
was paralyzed, and they pulled away
enough ironmongery there to build a cul¬
vert with.
Young Ottley remembered that the in¬
structions for a case like this were all in the
“ Vademecome,” but even he began to feel a
little alarmed as he saw what came away
from the engine and was stacked by the side
of the line. After forty minutes of the
hardest kind of work it seemed to him that
everything movable was cleared out, and
that he might venture to give her steam.
She leaked and sweated and shook, but she
moved — in a grinding sort of way — and the
soldiers cheered.
Rustomjee flatly refused to help in any¬
thing so revolutionary as driving an engine
on one cylinder, because, he said. Heaven
had decreed that he should always be un¬
lucky, even with sound machines. More¬
over, as he pointed out, the pressure-gauge
was jumping up and down like a bottle-
imp. The stoker had long since gone
away into the night; for he was a prudent
man.
‘‘Doocid queer thing altogether/’ said
240
LAND AND SEA TALES
the subaltern, “but look here, if you like,
ril chuck on the coals and you can drive the
old jigamaroo, if she’ll go.”
“Perhaps she will blow up,” said the
gunner-guard.
“’Shouldn’t at all wonder by the sound of
her. Where’s the shovel?” said the sub¬
altern.
“Oah no. She’s all raight according to
my book, I think,” said young Ottley.
“Now we will go to Serai Rajgara — if she
moves.”
She moved with long ssghee! ssghee^s! of
exhaustion and lamentation. She moved
quite seven miles an hour, and — for the
floods were all over the line — the staggering
voyage began.
The subaltern stoked four shovels to the
minute, spreading them thin, and Number
Forty made noises like a dying cow, and
young Ottley discovered that it was one
thing to run a healthy switching-locomotive
up and down the yards for fun when the
head of the yard wasn’t looking, and quite
another to drive a very sick one over an
unknown road in absolute darkness and
tropic rain. But they felt their way along
with their hearts in their mouths till they
THE BOLD TRENTICE
241
came to a distant signal, and whistled
frugally, having no steam to spare.
“This might be Serai Rajgara,’" said
young Ottley, hopefully.
“’Looks more like the Suez Canal,” said
the subaltern. “I say, when an engine
kicks up that sort of a noise she’s a little
impatient, isn’t she.^”
“That sort of noise” was a full-powered,
furious yelling whistle half a mile up the line.
“That is the Down Mail,” said young
Ottley. “We have delayed Olaf two hours
and forty-five minutes. She must surely
be in Serai Rajgara.”
“’Don’t wonder she wants to get out of
it,” said the subaltern. “Golly, what a
country!”
The line here dipped bodily under water,
and young Ottley sent the gunner-guard on
to find the switch to let Number Forty into
the siding. Then he followed and drew up
with a doleful wop! wop! wop! by the side
of the great forty-five-ton, six-wheel, cou¬
pled, eighteen-inch inside-cylinder Number
Twenty-five, all paint and lacquer, standing
roaring at the head of the Down Mail. The
rest was all water — flat, level and solid from
one point of the horizon to the other.
242 LAND AND SEA TALES
OlaPs red beard flared like a danger-
signal, and as soon as they were in range
some knobby pieces of Giridih coal whizzed
past young Ottley’s head.
‘"’Your friend very mad.^” said the subal¬
tern, ducking.
‘‘Aah!” roared Olaf. “This is the fifth
time you make delay. Three hours’ delay
you make me — Swanson — the Mail! Now
I will lose more time to break your head.”
He swung on to the foot-board of Number
Forty, with a shovel in one hand.
“Olaf!” cried young Ottley, and Olaf
nearly tumbled backward. “Rustomjee is
behind.”
“Of course. He always is. But you
How you come here.^”
“Oah, we smashed up. I have discon¬
nected her and arrived here on one cylinder,
by your book. We are only a — a diagram
of an engine, I think.”
“My book! My very good book. My
WademecomeM Ottley, you ^ are a 'fine
driver. I forgive my delays. It was worth.
Oh, my book, my book!” and Olaf leapt
back to Number Twenty-five, shouting
things about Swedenborg and steam.
“Thatt is all right,” said young Ottley,
THE BOLD TRENTICE 243
‘‘but where is Serai Rajgara? We want
assistance.”
“There is no Serai Rajgara. The water
is two feet on the embankment, and the tele¬
graph office is fell in. I will report at Pur-
nool Road. Good-night, good boy!”
The Mail train splashed out into the dark,
and Ottley made great haste to let off his
steam and draw his fire. Number Forty
had done enough for that night.
“Odd chap, that friend of yours,” said the
subaltern, when Number Forty stood empty
and disarmed in the gathering waters.
“What do we do now.^ Swim.?”
“Oah, no! At ten-forty-five thiss morn¬
ing that is coming, an engine will perhaps
arrive from Purnool Road and take us north.
Now we will lie down and go to sleep.
You see there is no Serai Rajgara. You
could get a cup of tea here once on a time.”
“Oh, my Aunt, what a country!” said the
subaltern, as he followed Ottley to the car¬
riage and lay down on the leather bunk.
For the next three weeks Olaf Swanson
talked to everybody of nothing but his
“Vademecome” and young Ottley. What
he said about his book does not matter, but
the compliments of a mail-driver are things
244 land and sea TALES
to be repeated, as they were, to people in
high authority, the masters of many engines.
So young Ottley was sent for, and he came
from the Sheds buttoning his jacket and
wondering which of his sins had been found
out this time.
It was a loop line near Ajaibpore, where
he could by no possibility come to harm.
It was light but steady traffic, and a first-
class superintendent was in charge; but it
was a driver’s billet, and permanent after
six months. As a new engine was on order
for the loop, the foreman of the Sheds told
young Ottley he might look through the
stalls and suit himself.
He waited, boiling with impatience, till
Olaf came in, and the two went off together,
old Olaf clucking, “Look! Look! Look!”
like a hen, all down the Sheds, and they chose
a nearly new Hawthorne, No. 239, which
Olaf highly recommended. Then Olaf went
away, to give young Ottley his chance to
order her to the cleaning-pit, and jerk his
thumb at the cleaner and say, as he turned
magnificently on his heel, “Thursday, eight
o’clock. Mallum? Understand?”
That was almost the proudest moment of
his life. The very proudest was when he
THE BOLD TRENTICE 245
pulled out of Atami Junction through the
brick-field on the way to his loop, and passed
the Down Mail, with 01 af in the cab.
They say in the Sheds that you could
have heard Number Two hundred and
Thirty-nine’s whistle from Raneegunge clear
to Calcutta.
THE NURSES
WHEN, with a pain he desires to ex¬
plain to the multitude, Baby howls
Himself black in the face, toothlessly striv¬
ing to curse;
And the six-month-old Mother begins to
enquire of the Gods if it may be
Tummy, or Temper, or Pins — what does the
adequate Nurse?
See! At one turn of her head the trouble is
guessed; and, thereafter
She juggles (unscared by his throes) with
drops of hot water and spoons.
Till the hiccoughs are broken by smiles, and
the smiles pucker up into laughter.
And he lies o’er her shoulder and crows,
and she, as she nurses him, croons!
When, at the head of the grade, tumultuous
out of the cutting,
Pours the belated Express, roars at the night,
and draws clear,
246
THE NURSES
247
Redly obscured or displayed by her fire-
door’s opening and shutting —
Symbol of strength under stress — what does
her small engineer?
Clamour and darkness encircle his way. Do
they deafen or blind him?
No ! — nor the pace he must keep. He, being
used to these things,
Placidly follows his work, which is laying his
mileage behind him.
While his passengers trustfully sleep, and he,
as he handles her, sings!
When, with the gale at her heel, the barque
lies down and recovers —
Rolling through forty degrees, combing the
stars with her tops,
What says the man at the wheel, holding her
straight as she hovers
On the shoulders of wind-screening seas,
steadying her as she drops ?
Behind him the blasts without check from
the Pole to the Tropic, pursue him.
Heaving up, heaping high, slamming home,
the surges he must not regard:
248 LAND AND SEA TALES
Beneath him the crazy wet deck, and all
Ocean on end to undo him;
Above him one desperate sail, thrice-reefed
but still buckling the yard!
Under his hand fleet the spokes and return,
to be held or set free again;
And she bows and makes shift to obey their
behest, till the master-wave comes
And her gunnel goes under in thunder and
smokes, and she chokes in the trough
of the sea again!
Ere she can lift and make way to its crest;
and he, as he nurses her, hums!
These have so utterly mastered their work that
they work without thinking;
Holding three-fifths of their brain in reserve
for whatever betide.
So, when catastrophe threatens, of colic, col¬
lision or sinking.
They shunt the full gear into train, and take
the small thing in their stride.
THE SON OF HIS FATHER
i
\
}
k
I
«
#
f!
# • I
THE SON OF HIS FATHER
IT IS a queer name/’ Mrs. Strickland ad¬
mitted, ‘‘and none of our family have
ever borne it; but, you see, he is the first
man to us.”
So he was called Adam, and to that world
about him he was the first of men — a man-
child alone. Heaven sent him no Eve for a
companion, but all earth, horse and foot,
was at his feet. As soon as he was old
enough to appear in public he held a levee,
and Strickland’s sixty policemen, with their
sixty clanking sabres, bowed to the dust
before him. When his fingers closed a little
on Imam Din’s sword-hilt they rose and
roared till Adam roared too, and was with¬
drawn.
“Now that was no cry of fear,” said
Imam Din afterwards, speaking to his
companion in the Police lines. “He was
angry — and so young! Brothers, he will
make a very strong Police officer.”
“Does the Memsahib nurse him.^” said a
251
252 LAND AND SEA TALES
new recruit, the dye-smell not yet out of his
yellow cotton uniform.
'‘Ho!’' said an up-country Naik scorn¬
fully; "it has not been known for more than
ten days that my woman nurses him.” He
curled his moustaches as lordly as ever an
Inspector could afford to do, for he knew
that the husband of the foster-mother of the
son of the District Superintendent of Police
was a man of consideration.
"I am glad,” said Imam Din, loosening
his belt. "Those who drink our blood be¬
come of our own blood, and I have seen, in
those thirty years, that the sons of Sahibs
once being born here return when they are
men. Yes, they return after they have been
to Belait [Europe].”
"And what do they in Belait.^” asked the
recruit respectfully.
"Get instruction — which thou hast not,”
returned the Naik. "Also they drink of
belaitee-panee [soda-water] enough to give
them that devil’s restlessness which endures
for all their lives. Whence we of Hind have
trouble.”
"My father’s uncle,” said Imam Din
slowly, with importance, "was Ressaldar of
the Long Coat Horse; and the Empress
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 253
called him to Europe in the year that she
had accomplished fifty years of rule. He
said (and there were also other witnesses)
that the Sahibs there drink only common
water even as do we; and that the helaitee-
panee does not run in all their rivers.’’
‘"He said that there was a Shish Mahal
— a glass palace — half a mile in length, and
that the rail-train ran under roads; and that
there are boats bigger than a village. He is
a great talker.” The Naik spoke scorn¬
fully. He had no well-born uncles.
He is at least a man of good birth,” said
Imam Dim, and the Naik was silent.
“Ho! Ho!” Imam Din reached out
to his pipe, chuckling till his fat sides shook
again. “Strickland Sahib’s foster-mother
was the wife of a gardener in the Ferozepur
district. I was a young man then. This
child also will be suckled here and he will
have double wisdom, and when he is a Police
officer it will be very bad for the thieves in
this part of the world. Ho! Ho!”
“Strickland Sahib’s butler has said,” the
Naik went on, “that they will call him
Adam — and no jaw-splitting English name.
Udaam. The padre will name him at their
church in due time.”
2S4 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Who can tell the ways of Sahibs? Now
Strickland Sahib knows more of the Faith
than ever I had time to learn — prayers,
charms, names and stories of the Blessed
Ones. Yet he is not a Mussulman,’’ said
Imam Din thoughtfully.
“For the reason that he knows as much
of the gods of Hindustan, and so he rides
with a rein in each hand. Remember that
he sat under the Baba Atal, a faquir among
faquirs, for ten days; whereby a man came
to be hanged for the murder of a dancing girl
on the night of the great earthquake,” the
Naik replied.
“True — it is true. And yet — the Sahibs
are one day so wise — and another so foolish.
But he has named the child well; Adam.
Huzrut Adam. Ho! Ho! Father Adam
we must call him.”
“And all who minister to the child,” said
the Naik quietly, but with meaning, “will
come to great honour.”
Adam throve, being prayed over before
the Gods of at least three creeds, in a garden
almost as fair as Eden. There were gigantic
clumps of bamboos that talked continually,
and enormous plantains, trees on whose
soft, paper skin he could scratch with his
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 255
nails; green domes of mango-trees as huge
as the dome of St. Paul’s, full of parrots as
big as cassowaries and grey squirrels the
size of foxes. At the end of the garden
stood a hedge of flaming poinsettias higher
than anything in the world, because, child¬
like, Adam’s eye could not carry to the
tops of the mango-trees. Their green went
out against the blue sky, but the red poin¬
settias he could just see. A nurse who
talked continually about snakes and pulled
him back from the mouth of a fascinating
dry well, and a mother who believed that
the sun hurt little heads, were the only
drawbacks to this loveliness. But, as his
legs grew under him, he found that by
scaling an enormous rampart — three feet
of broken-down mud wall at the end of the
garden — he could come into a ready-made
kingdom, where everyone was his slave.
Imam Din showed him the way one eve¬
ning, and the Police troopers, cooking their
supper, received him with rapture, and gave
him pieces of very indigestible, but alto¬
gether delightful, spiced bread.
Here he sat or sprawled in the horse-feed
where the Police were picketed in a double
line, and he named them, men and beasts
2s6 land and sea tales
together, according to his ideas and ex¬
periences, as his First Father had done be¬
fore him. In those days everything had a
name, from the mud mangers to the heel-
ropes, for things were people to Adam ex¬
actly as people are things to folk in their
second childhood. Through all the con¬
ferences — one hand twisted into Imam
Din’s beard, and the other on his polished
belt buckle — there were two other people
who came and went across the talk — Death
and Sickness — persons greater than Imam
Din, and stronger than the heel-roped
horses. There was Mata, the small-pox, a
woman in some way connected with pigs;
and Heza, the cholera, a black man, accord¬
ing to Adam; and Booka, starvation; and
Kismet, who settled all questions, from the
untimely choking of a pet mungoose in the
kitchen-drain to the absence of a young
Policeman who once missed a parade and
never came back. It was all very wonderful
to Adam, but not worth much thinking over;
for a child’s mind is bounded by his eyes ex¬
actly as a horse’s view of the road is limited
by his blinkers. Between all these objec¬
tionable shadowy vagrants stood a ring of
kind faces and strong arms, and Mata and
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 257
Heza would never touch Adam, the first of
men. Kismet might do so, because — and
this was a mystery no staring into his
looking-glass would solve — Kismet was writ¬
ten, like Police orders for the day, in or on
Adam’s head. Imam Din could not ex¬
plain how this might be, and it was from
that grey, fat Mohammedan that Adam
learned through every inflection the Khuda
jhanta [God knows!] that settles everything
in the mind of Asia.
Beyond the fact that ‘‘ Khuda” [God] was
a very good man and kept lions, Adam’s
theology did not run far. Mrs. Strickland
tried to teach him a few facts, but he re¬
volted at the story of Genesis as untrue. A
turtle, he said, upheld the world, and one-half
the adventures of Huzrut Nu [Father Noah]
had never been told. If Mamma wanted
to hear them she must ask Imam Din.
‘Ht’s awful,” said Mrs. Strickland, half
crying, "'to think of his growing up like a
little heathen.” Mrs. Strickland had been
born and brought up in England, and did
not quite understand Eastern things.
"Let him alone,” said Strickland. "He’ll
grow out of it all, or it will only come back
to him in dreams.”
258 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Are you sure?’’ said his wife.
“Quite. I was sent home when I was
seven, and they flicked it out of me with a
wet towel at Harrow. Public schools don’t
encourage anything that isn’t quite English.’^
Mrs. Strickland shuddered, for she had
been trying not to think of the separation
that follows motherhood in India, and
makes life there, for all that is written to
the contrary, not quite the most desirable
thing in the world. Adam trotted out to
hear about more miracles, and his nurse
must have worried him beyond bounds, for
she came back weeping, saying that Adam
Baba was in danger of being eaten alive by
wild horses.
As a matter of fact he had shaken off
Juma by bolting between a couple of pick¬
eted horses, and lying down under their
bellies. That they were old personal friends
of his, Juma did not understand, nor Strick¬
land either. Adam was settled at ease when
his father arrived, breathless and white,
and the stallions put back their ears and
squealed.
“If you come here,” said Adam, ‘'they
will hit you kicks. Tell Juma I have eaten
my rice, and I wish to be alone.”
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 259
“Come out at once/’ said Strickland, for
the horses were beginning to paw.
“Why should I obey Juma’s order.? She
is afraid of horses.”
“It is not Juma’s order. It is mine.
Obey!”
“Ho!” said Adam. “Juma did not tell
me that”; and he crawled out on all fours
among the shod feet. Mrs. Strickland was
crying bitterly with fear and excitement,
and as a sacrifice to the home gods Adam
had to be whipped. He said with perfect
justice —
“There was no order that I should not
sit with the horses, and they are my horses.
Why is there this tamasha [fuss].?”
Strickland’s face showed him that the
whipping was coming, and the child turned
white. Motherlike, Mrs. Strickland left
the room, but Juma, the foster-mother,
stayed to see.
“Am I to be whipped here.?” he gasped.
“Of course.”
“Before that woman? Father, I am a
man — I am not afraid. It is my izzat — my
honour.”
Strickland only laughed — (to this day I
cannot imagine what possessed him), and
26o land and sea tales
gave Adam the little tap-tap with a riding
cane that was whipping sufficient for his
years.
When it was all over, Adam said quietly,
‘'I am little and you are big. If I had
stayed among my horse-folk I should not
have been whipped. You are afraid to go
there.”
The merest chance led me to Strickland’s
house that afternoon. When I was half¬
way down the drive Adam passed me with¬
out recognition, at a fast run. I caught one
glimpse of his face under his big hat, and it
was the face of his father as I had once seen
it in the grey of the morning when it bent
over a leper. I caught the child by the
shoulder.
‘‘Let me go!” he screamed; though he
and I were the best of friends, as a rule.
“Let me go!”
“Where to. Father Adam.^” He was
quivering like a haltered colt.
“To the well. I have been beaten. * I
have been beaten before a woman ! Let me
go!” He tried to bite my hand.
“That is a small matter,” I said. “Men
are born to beatings.”
“ Thou hast never been beaten,” he said
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 261
savagely (we were talking in the native
tongue).
‘‘Indeed I have; times past counting.’’
“Before women.?”
“ My mother and my ayah saw. By
women, too, for that matter. What of
it.?”
“What didst thou do?” He stared be¬
yond my shoulder up the long drive.
“It is long ago, and I have forgotten. I
was older than thou art; but even then I
forgot, and now the thing is only a jest to
be talked of.”
Adam drew one big breath and broke
down utterly in my arms. Then he raised
his head, and his eyes were Strickland’s eyes
when Strickland gave orders.
“Ho! Imam Din!”
The fat orderly seemed to spring out of
the earth at our feet, crashing through the
bushes, and standing at attention.
“Hast thou ever been beaten?” said
Adam.
“Assuredly. By my father when I was
thirty years old. He beat me with a
plough-beam before all the women of the
village.”
“Wherefore.?”
262 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘Because I had returned to the village on
leave from the Government service, and said
of the village elders that they had not seen
the world. Therefore he beat me to show
that no seeing of the world changes father
and son.’’
“And thou.^”
“I stood up to the beating. He was my
father.”
“Good,” said Adam, and turned on his
heel without another word.
Imam Din looked after him. “An ele¬
phant breeds but once in a lifetime, but he
breeds elephants. Yet, I am glad I am no
father of tuskers,” said he.
“What is it all.?” I asked.
“His father beat him with a whip no
bigger than a reed. But the child could not
have done what he desired to do without
leaping through me. And I am of some few
pounds weight. Look!”
Imam Din stepped back through the
bushes, and the pressed grass showed that
he had been lying curled round the mouth
of the dry well.
“When there was talk of beating, I knew
that one who sat among horses such as ours
was not like to kiss his father’s hand. He
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 263
might have done away with himself. So I
lay down in this place.’’ We stood still
looking at the well-curb.
Adam came along the garden path to us.
“I have spoken to my father,” he said sim¬
ply. “Imam Din, tell thy Naik that his
woman is dismissed my service.”
Huzoor! [Your Highness!]” said Imam
Din, stooping low.
“For no fault of hers.”
“Protector of the Poor!”
“And to-day.”
Khodawund! [Heaven-born!]”
“It is an order. Go!”
Again the salute, and Imam Din de¬
parted, with that same set of the back which
he wore when he had taken an order from
Strickland. I thought that it would be
well to go too, but Strickland beckoned me
from the verandah. When I came up he
was perfectly white, rocking to and fro in
his chair.
“Do you know he was going to chuck
himself down the well — because I tapped
him just now.^” he said helplessly.
“I ought to,” I replied. “He has just
dismissed his nurse — on his own authority^
I suppose?”
264 land and sea TALES
‘‘He told me just now that he wouldn’t
have her for a nurse any more. I never
supposed he meant it for an instant. I
suppose she’ll have to go.”
Now Strickland, the Police officer, was
feared through the length and breadth of
the Punjab by murderers, horse-thieves, and
cattle-lifters.
Adam returned, halting outside the ve¬
randah.
“I have sent Juma away because she saw
that — that which happened. Until she is
gone I do not come into the house,” he said.
“But to send away thy foster-mother!”
said Strickland with reproach.
“/ do not send her away. It is thy
blame,” and the small forefinger was pointed
to Strickland. “I will not obey her. I will
not eat from her hand. I will not sleep
with her. Send her away!”
Strickland stepped out and lifted the child
into the verandah.
“This folly has lasted long enough,” *he
said. “Come now and be wise.”
“I am little and you are big,” said Adam
between set teeth. “You can beat me
before this man or cut me to pieces. But
I will not have Juma for my ayah any more.
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 265
She saw me beaten. I will not eat till she
goes. I swear it by — my father’s head.”
Strickland sent him indoors to his mother,
and we could hear sounds of weeping and
Adam’s voice saying nothing more than
‘‘Send Juma away!” Presently Juma came
in and wept too, and Adam repeated, “It is
no fault of thine, but go!”
And the end of it was that Juma went
with all her belongings, and Adam fought
his own way into his little clothes until the
new ayah came. His address of welcome
to her was rather amazing. In a few words
it ran : “ If I do wrong, send me to my father.
If you strike me, I will try to kill you. I
do not wish my ayah to play with me. Go
and eat rice!”
From that Adam foreswore the society of
ayahs and small native boys as much as a
small boy can, confining himself to Imam
Din and his friends of the Police. The
Naik, Juma’s husband, had been presuming
not a little on his position, and when Adam’s
favour was withdrawn from his wife he
thought it best to apply for a transfer to
another post. There were too many com¬
panions anxious to report his shortcomings
to Strickland.
266 LAND AND SEA TALES
Towards his father Adam kept a guarded
neutrality. There was not a touch of sulki¬
ness in it, for the child’s temper was as clear
as a bell. But the difference and the polite¬
ness worried Strickland.
If the Policemen had loved Adam before
the affair of the well, they worshipped him
now.
‘‘He knows what honour means,” said
Imam Din. “He has justified himself upon
a point thereof. He has carried an order
through his father’s household as a child of
the Blood might do. Therefore he is not
altogether a child any longer. Wah! He
is a tiger’s cub.’^ The next time that
Adam made his little unofficial inspection
of the lines. Imam Din, and, by conse¬
quence, all the others, stood upon their feet
with their hands to their sides, instead of
calling out from where they lay, “Salaam,
Babajee,” and other disrespectful things.
But Strickland took counsel with his wife,
and she with the cheque-book and their
lean bank account, and they decided that
Adam must go “home” to his aunts. But
England is not home to a child who has been
born in India, and it never becomes home¬
like unless he spends all his youth there.
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 267
Their bank-book showed that if they econ¬
omized through the summer by going to a
cheap hill-station instead of to Simla (where
Mrs. Strickland’s parents lived, and where
Strickland might be noticed by the Govern¬
ment) they could send Adam home in the
next spring. It would be hard pinching,
but it could be done.
Dalhousie was chosen as being the cheap¬
est of the hill-stations; — Dalhousie and a
little five-roomed cottage full of mildew,
tucked away among the rhododendrons.
Adam had been to Simla three or four
times, and knew by name most of the
drivers on the road there, but this new place
disquieted him. He came to me for infor¬
mation, his hands deep in his knickerbocker
pockets, walking step for step as his father
walked.
“There will be none of my hhai-bund
[brotherhood] up there,” he said disconso¬
lately, “and they say that I must lie still in
a doolie [palanquin] for a day and a night,
being carried like a sheep. I wish to take
some of my mpunted men to Dalhousie.”
I told him that there was a small boy,
called Victor, at Dalhousie, who had a calf
for a pet, and was allowed to play with it
268 LAND AND SEA TALES
on the public roads. After that A-dam
could not sufficiently hurry the packing.
“First,” said he, “I shall ask that man
Victor to let me play with the cow’s child.
If he is muggra [ill-conditioned], I shall
tell my Policemen to take it away.”
“But that is unjust,” said Strickland,
“and there is no order that the Police should
do injustice.”
“When the Government pay is not suffi¬
cient, and low-2caste men are promoted,
what can an honest man do.?” Adam replied,
in the very touch and accent of Imam Din;
and Strickland’s eyebrows went up.
“You talk too much to the Police, my
son,” he said.
“Always. About everything,” said Adam
promptly. “They say that when I am an
officer I shall know as much as my father.”
“God forbid, little one!”
“They say, too, that you are as clever as
Shaitan [the Evil One], to know things.”
“They say that, do they.?” and Strick¬
land looked pleased. His pay was small,
but he had his reputation, and it was dear
to him.
“They say also — not to me, but to one
another when they eat rice behind the wall —
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 269
that in your own heart you esteem yourself
as wise as Suleiman [Soloman], who was
cheated by Shaitan.”
This time Strickland did not look so
pleased. Adam, in all innocence, launched
into a long story about Suleiman-bin-
Daoud, who once, out of vanity, pitted his
wits against Shaitan, and because God was
not on his side Shaitan sent ‘‘a little devil
of low caste,” as Adam put it, who cheated
him utterly and put him to shame before
‘‘all the other Kings.”
“By Gum!” said Strickland, when the
tale was done, and went away, while Adam
took me to task for laughing at Imam
Din’s stories. I did not wonder that he
was called Huzrut Adam, for he looked old
as all time in his grave childhood, sitting
cross-legged, his battered little helmet far
at the back of his head, his forefinger wag¬
ging up and down, native fashion, and the
wisdom of serpents on his unconscious lips.
That May he went up to Dalhousie with
his mother, and in those days the journey
ended in fifty or sixty miles of uphill travel
in a doolie or palanquin along a road wind¬
ing through the Himalayas. Adam sat in
the doolie with his mother, and Strickland
270 LAND AND SEA TALES
rode and tied with me, a spare doolie follow¬
ing. The march began after we got out of
the train at Pathankot, in a wet hot night
among the rice and poppy fields.
II
It was all new to Adam, and he had opin¬
ions to advance — notably about a fish that
jumped in a way-side pond. ^'Now I
know,’’ he shouted, ‘‘how God puts them
there ! First He makes them up above and
•then He drops them down. That was a
new one.” Then, lifting his head to the
stars, he cried: “Oh, God, do it again, but
slowly, so that I, Adam, may see.”
But nothing happened, and the doolie^
bearers lit the noisome, dripping rag-torches,
and Adam’s eyes shone big in the dancing
light, and we smelt the dry dust of the
plains that we were leaving after eleven
months’ hard work.
At stated times the men ceased their
drowsy, grunting tune, and sat down for a
smoke. Between the guttering of their
water-pipes we could hear the cries of the*
beasts of the night, and the wind stirring
in the folds of the mountain ahead. At the
changing-station the voice of Adam, the
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 271
First of Men, would be lifted to rouse the
sleepers in the huts till the fresh relay of
bearers shambled from their cots and the
relief pony with them.
Then we would re-form and go on, and by
the time the moon rose Adam was asleep,
and there was no sound in the night except
the grunting of the men, the husky mur¬
mur of some river a thousand feet down
in the valley, and the squeaking of Strick¬
land’s saddle. So we went up from date-
palm to deodar, till the dawn wind came
round a corner all fresh from the snows, and
we snuffed it. I heard Strickland say,
‘‘Wife, my overcoat, please,” and Adam,
fretfully, “Where is Dalhousie and the
cow’s child?” Then I slept till Strickland
turned me out of the warm doolie at seven
o’clock, and I stepped into all the splendour
of a cool Hill day, the Plains sweltering
twenty miles back and four thousand feet
below. Adam waked too, and needs must
ride in front of me to ask a million questions,
and shout at the monkeys and clap his hands
when the painted pheasants bolted across
our road, and hail every woodcutter and
drover and pilgrim within sight, till we
halted for breakfast at a rest house. After
272 LAND AND SEA TALES
that, being a child, he went out to play with
a train of bullock-drivers halted by the
roadside, and we had to chase him out of a
native liquor shop, where he was bargaining
with a native seven-year-old for a parrot in a
bamboo cage.
Said he, wriggling on my pommel as we
went on again, ‘‘There were four men
behosh [insensible] at the back of that house.
Wherefore do men grow behosh from drink-
i„gr
“It is the nature of the waters,” I said,
and, calling back, “Strick, what’s that grog¬
shop doing so close to the road? It’s a
temptation to any one’s servants.”
“ Dunno,” said a sleepy voice in the doolie.
“This is Kennedy’s District. ’Twasn’t here
in my time.”
“Truly the waters smell bad,” Adam went
on. “I smelt them, but I did not get the
parrot even for six annas. The woman of
the house gave me a love gift that I found
playing near the verandah.”
“And what was the gift. Father Adam?”
“A nose-ring for my ayah. Ohe! Ohe!
Look at that camel with the muzzle on his
nose!”
A string of loaded camels came cruising
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 273
round the corner as a fleet rounds a
cape.
“Ho, Malik! Why does not a camel
salaam like an elephant His neck is long
enough,” Adam cried.
“The Angel Jibrail made him a fool at the
beginning,” said the driver, as he swayed
on the top of the leading beast, and laughter
ran all along the line of red-bearded men.
“That is true,” said Adam solemnly, and
they laughed again.
At last, in the late afternoon, we came to
Dalhousie, the loveliest of the hill-stations,
and separated, Adam hardly able to be
restrained from setting out at once to find
Victor and the “cow’s child.” I found
them both, something to my trouble, next
morning. The two young sinners had a
calf on a tight rope just at a sharp turn in
the Mall, and were pretending that he was
a raja’s elephant who had gone mad;
and they shouted with delight. Then we
began to talk, and Adam, by way of crush¬
ing Victor’s repeated reminders to me that he
and not “that other” was the owner of the
calf, said, “It is true I have no cow’s child;
but a great dacoity [robbery] has been done
on my father.”
274 land and sea TALES
“We came up together yesterday. There
could have been nothing,” I said.
“It was my mother’s horse. She has
been dacoited with beating and blows, and
now is so thin.” He held his hands an inch
apart. ‘‘My father is at the telegraph-
house sending telegrams. Imam Din will
cut off all their heads. I desire your saddle¬
cloth for a howdah for my elephant. Give
It me!
This was exciting, but not lucid. I went
to the telegraph office and found Strickland
in a black temper among many telegraph
forms. A dishevelled, one-eyed groom
stood in a corner whimpering at intervals.
He was a man whom Adam invariably ad¬
dressed as Be-shakl, be-ukl, be~ank'’ [ugly,
stupid, eyeless]. It seemed that Strickland
had sent his wife’s horse up to Dalhousie by
road, a fortnight’s march, in the groom’s
charge. This is the custom in Upper India.
Among the foothills, near Dhunnera or
Dhar, horse and man had been violently set
upon in the night by four men, who had
beaten the groom (his leg was bandaged
from knee to ankle in proof), had incident¬
ally beaten the horse, and had robbed the
groom of the bucket and blanket, and all
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 275
his money — eleven rupees, nine annas.
Last, they had left him for dead by the way-
side, where some woodcutters had found and
nursed him. Then the one-eyed man howl¬
ed with anguish, thinking over his bruises.
“They asked me if I was Strickland Sahib’s
servant, and I, thinking the Protection of
the Name would be sufficient, spoke the
truth. Then they beat me grievously.”
“H’m!” said Strickland. “I thought
they wouldn’t dacoit as a business on the
Dalhousie road. This is meant for me
personally — sheer hadmashi [impudence].
All right.”
In justice to a very hard-working class it
must be said that the thieves of Upper India
have the keenest sense of humour. The
last compliment that they can pay a Police
officer is to rob him, and if, as once they did,
they can loot a Deputy Inspector-General
of Police, on the eve of his retirement, of
everything except the clothes on his back,
their joy is complete. They cause letters of
derision and telegrams of condolence to be
sent to the victim; for of all men thieves
are most compelled to keep abreast of
progress.
Strickland was a man of few words where
276 LAND AND SEA TALES
his business was concerned. I had never
seen a Police officer robbed before, and I
expected some excitement, but Strickland
held his tongue. He took the groom’s de¬
position, and then retired into himself for a
time. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Path-
ankot District, an official letter and an un¬
official note. Kennedy’s reply was purely
unofficial, and it ran thus: “This seems a
compliment solely intended for you. My
wonder is you didn’t get it before. The
men are probably back in your district by
now. My Dhunnera and foot-hill people
are highly respectable cultivators, and,
seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and
I can’t trust my Inspector out of my sight.
I’m not going to turn their harvest upside
down with Police investigations. I’m run
off my feet with vaccination Police work.
You’d better look at home. The Shub-
kudder gang were through here a fortnight
back. They laid up at the Amritsar Serai,
and then worked down. No cases against
them in my charge; but, remember, you
imprisoned their head-man for receiving
stolen goods in Prub Dyal’s burglary. They
owe you one.”
“Exactly what I thought,” said Strick-
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 277
land. ‘H had a notion it was the Shub-
kudder gang from the first. We must make
it pleasant for them at Peshawur, and in
my District, too. They’re just the kind
that would lie up under Imam Din’s
shadow.”
From this point onward the wires began
to be worked heavily. Strickland had a
very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder gang,
gathered at first hand.
They were the same syndicate that had
once stolen a Deputy Commissioner’s cow,
put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty
miles into the jungle before they lost in¬
terest in the joke. They added insult to
insult by writing that the Deputy Com¬
missioner’s cows and horses were so much
alike that it took them two days to find out
the difference and they would not lift the
like of such cattle any more.
The District Superintendent at Peshawur
replied to Strickland that he was expecting
the gang, and Strickland’s Assistant, in his
own district, being young and full of zeal,
sent up the most amazing clues.
“Now that’s just what I want that young
fool not to do,” said Strickland. “He’s an
English boy, born and bred, and his father
278 LAND AND SEA TALES
before him. He has about as much tact
as a bull, and he won’t work quietly under
my Inspector. I wish the Government
would keep our service for country-born
men. Those first five or six years in India
give a man a pull that lasts him all his life.
Adam, if only you were old enough to be
my Assistant!” He looked down at the
little fellow in the verandah. Adam was
deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike
a child, did not lose interest after the first
week. On the contrary, he would ask his
father every evening what had been done,
and Strickland had drawn him a map on the
white wall of the verandah, showing the
different towns in which Policemen were on
the look-out for thieves. They were Am¬
ritsar, Jullunder, Phillour, Gurgaon, Rawal
Pindi, Peshawur and Multan. Adam looked
up at it as he answered —
‘‘There has been great dikh [trouble] in
this case?”
“Very great trouble. I wish that thou
wert a young man and my Assistant to
help me.”
“Dost thou need help, my father?” Adam
asked curiously, with his head on one side.
“Very much.”
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 279
“Leave it all alone. It is bad. Let
loose everything.’’
“That must not be. Those beginning a
business continue to the end.”
“Thou wilt continue to the end.^ Dost
thou not know who did the dacoity.^”
Strickland shook his head. Adam turned
to me with the same question, and I an¬
swered it in the same way.
“What foolish people!” he said, and
turned his back on us.
He showed plainly in all our dealings af¬
terwards how we had fallen in his opinion.
Strickland told me that he would sit at the
door of his father’s workroom and stare
at him for half an hour at a time as he went
through his papers. Strickland seemed to
work harder over the case than if he had
been in office in the Plains.
“And sometimes I look up and I fancy
the little chap’s laughing at me. It’s an
awful thing to have a son. You see, he’s
your own and his own, and between the
two you don’t quite know how to handle
him,” said Strickland. “I wonder what in
the world he thinks about.”
I asked Adam this later on, quietly. He
put his head on one side for a moment and
28o land and sea tales
replied: ‘'In these days I think about
great things. I do not play with Victor and
the cow’s child any more. Victor is only
a baba.”
At the end of the third week of Strick¬
land’s leave, the result of Strickland’s
labours — labours that had made Mrs. Strick¬
land more indignant against the dacoits than
any one else — came to hand. The Police
at Peshawur reported that half of the Shub-
kudder gang were held at Peshawur to
account for the possession of some blankets
and a horse-bucket. Strickland’s assistant
had also four men under suspicion in his
charge; and Imam Din must have stirred
up Strickland’s Inspector to investigations
on his own account, for a string of inco¬
herent telegrams came in from the Club
Secretary in which he entreated, exhorted,
and commanded Strickland to take his
“mangy Policemen” off the Club premises.
“Your men, in servants’ quarters here,
examining cook. Billiard-marker indignant.
Steward threatens resignation. Members
furious. Grooms stopped on roads. Shut
up, or my resignation goes to Committee.”
“Now I shouldn’t in the least wonder,”
said Strickland thoughtfully to his wife,
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 281
*‘if the Club was not just the place where the
men would lie up. Billy Watson isn’t at all
pleased, though. I think I shall have to
cut my leave by a week and go down to
take charge. If there’s anything to be
told, the men will tell me.”
Mrs. Strickland’s eyes filled with tears.
“I shall try to steal ten days if I can in the
autumn,” he said soothingly, ‘‘but I must
go now. It will never do for the gang
to think that they can burgle my belong-
• >>
mgs.
That was in the forenoon, and Strickland
asked me to lunch to leave me some instruc¬
tions about his big dog, with authority to
rebuke those who did not attend to her.
Tietjens was growing too old and too fat to
live in the plains in the summer. When I
came, Adam had climbed into his high chair
at table, and Mrs. Strickland seemed ready
to weep at any moment over the general
misery of things.
“I go down to the Plains to-morrow, my
son,” said Strickland.
“Wherefore.?” said Adam, reaching out
for a ripe mango and burying his head in it.
“Imam Din has caught the men who
did the dacoity, and there are also others at
282 LAND AND SEA TALES
Peshawur under suspicion. I must go to
see.
Bus! [enough]/’ said Adam, between
sucks at his mango, as Mrs. Strickland
tucked the napkin round his neck. ‘‘Im¬
am Din speaks lies. Do not go.”
“It is necessary. There has been great
dikh-dari [trouble-giving].”
Adam came out of the fruit for a minute
and laughed. Then, returning, he spoke
between slow and deliberate mouthfuls.
“The dacoits live in Beshakl’s head. They
will never be caught. All people know that.
The cook knows, and the scullion, and
Rahim Baksh here.”
“Nay,” said the butler behind his chair
hastily. “What should / know? Nothing
at all does the Servant of the Presence
know.”
Accha [good],” said Adam, and sucked
on. “Only it is known.”
“Speak, then,” said Strickland to him.
“What dost thou know? Remember my
groom was beaten insensible.”
“That was in the bad-water shop where
I played when we came up here. The boy
who would not sell me the parrot for six
annas told me that a one-eyed man had
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 283
come there and drunk the bad waters and
gone mad. He broke bedsteads. They hit
him with a bamboo till he was senseless, and
fearing he was dead, they nursed him on
milk — like a little baba. When I was play¬
ing first with the cow’s child, I asked Beshakl
if he were that man, and he said no. But
I knew, because many woodcutters in Dal-
housie asked him whether his head were
whole now.”
“But why,” I interrupted, “did Beshakl
tell lies?”
“Oh! He is a low-caste man, and de¬
sired to get consideration. Now he is a
witness in a great law-case, and men will
go to the jail on his account. It was to give
trouble and obtain notice that he did it.”
“Was it all lies?” said Strickland.
“Ask him,” said Adam, through the
mango-pulp.
Strickland passed through the door.
There was a howl of despair in the servants’
quarters up the hill, and he returned with
the one-eyed groom.
“Now,” said Strickland, “it is known.
Declare!”
“Beshakl,” said Adam, while the man
gasped. “Imam Din has caught four
284 land and sea TALES
men, and there are some more at Peshawur.
Bus! Bus! Bus! [Enough.]”
"‘Thou didst get drunk by the wayside,
and didst make a false case to cover it.
Speak!”
Like a good many other men, Strickland,
in possession of a few facts, was irresistible.
The groom groaned.
“I — I did not get drunk till — till — Pro¬
tector of the Poor, the mare rolled.”
All horses roll at Dhunnera. The road
is too narrow before that, and they smell
where the other horses have rolled. This
the bullock-drivers told me when we came
up here,” said Adam.
“She rolled. So her saddle was cut and
the curb-chain lost.”
“See!” said Adam, tugging a curb-chain
from his pocket. “That woman in the shop
gave it to me for a love-gift. Beshakl said
it was not his when I showed it. But I
knew.”
“Then they at the grog-shop, knowing
that I was the Servant of the Presence, said
that unless I drank and spent money they
would tell.”
“A lie! A lie!” said Strickland. “Son
of an owl, speak the truth now at least.”
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 285
‘‘Then I was afraid because I had lost the
curb-chain, so I cut the saddle across and
about.”
“She did not roll, then.?” said Strickland,
bewildered and angry.
“It was only the curb-chain that was lost.
Then I cut the saddle and went to drink
in the shop. I drank and there was a
fray. The rest I have forgotten till I re¬
covered.”
“And the mare the while? What of the
mare ?”
The man looked at Strickland and col¬
lapsed.
“She bore faggots for a week,” he said.
“Oh, poor Diamond said Mrs. Strick¬
land.
“And Beshakl was paid four annas for
her hire three days ago by the woodcutter’s
brother, who is the left-hand man of our
rickshaw-men here,” said Adam, in a loud
and joyful voice. “We all knew. We all
knew. I and the servants.”
Strickland was silent. His wife stared
helplessly at the child; the soul out of No¬
where that went its own way alone.
“Did no man help thee with the lies?” I
asked of the groom.
286 LAND AND SEA TALES
“None. Protector of the Poor — not
one.
‘‘They grew, then.?’’
“As a tale grows in telling. Alas! I am
a very bad man!” and he blinked his one
eye dolefully.
“Now four men are held at my Police sta¬
tion on thy account, and God knows how
many more at Peshawur, besides the ques¬
tions at Multan, and my honour is lost, and
my mare has been pack-pony to a wood¬
cutter. Son of Devils, what canst thou do
to make amends.?”
There was just a little break in Strick¬
land’s voice, and the man caught it. Bend¬
ing low, he answered, in the abject fawning
whine that confounds right and wrong more
surely than most modern creeds, “Protector
of the Poor, is the Police service shut to —
an honest man.?”
“Out!” cried Strickland, and swiftly as
the groom departed he must have heard our
shouts of laughter behind him.
“If you dismiss that man, Strick, I shall
engage him. He’s a genius,” said 1. “It
will take you months to put this mess right,
and Billy Watson won’t give you a minute’s
peaca”
THE SON OF HIS FATHER 287
‘‘You aren’t going to tell him?” said
Strickland appealingly.
“ I couldn’t keep this to myself if you were
my own brother. Four men arrested with
you — four or forty at Peshawur — and what
was that you said about Multan?”
“Oh, nothing. Only some camel-men
there have been - ”
“And a tribe of camel-men at Multan!
All on account of a lost curb-chain. Oh,
my Aunt!”
“And whose memsahib [lady] was thy
aunt?” said Adam, with the mango-stone
in his fist. We began to laugh again.
“But here,” said Strickland, pulling his
face together, “is a very bad child who has
caused his father to lose his honour before
all the Policemen of the Punjab.”
“Oh, they know,” said Adam. “It was
only for the sake of show that they caught
people. Assuredly they all knew it was
benowti [make-up].”
“And since when hast thou known ?” said
the first policeman in India to his son.
“Four days after we came here, after the
woodcutter had asked Beshakl after the
health of his head. Beshakl all but slew
one of them at the bad-water place.”
288 LAND AND SEA TALES
‘‘If thou hadst spoken then, time and
money and trouble to me and to others had
all been spared. Baba, thou hast done a
wrong greater than thy knowledge, and
thou hast put me to shame, and set me out
upon false words, and broken my honour.
Thou hast done very wrong. But perhaps
thou didst not think.?”
“Nay, but I did think. Father, my
honour was lost when that beating of me
happened in Juma’s presence. Now it is
made whole again.”
And with the most enchanting smile in
the world Adam climbed up on to his father’s
lap.
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
0
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
OF ALL things in the world there is
nothing, always excepting a good
mother, so worthy of honour as a good
school. Our School was created for the
sons of officers in the Army and Navy, and
filled with boys who meant to follow their
father’s calling.
It stood within two miles of Amyas Leigh’s
house at Northam, overlooking the Bur¬
roughs and the Pebble-ridge, and the mouth
of the Torridge whence the Rose sailed in
search of Don Guzman. From the front
dormitory windows, across the long rollers
of the Atlantic, you could see Lundy Island
and the Shutter Rock, where the Santa
Catherina galleon cheated Amyas out of his
vengeance by going ashore. If you have ever
read Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” you will
remember how all these things happened.
Inland lay the rich Devonshire lanes and
the fat orchards, and to the west the gorse
and the turf ran along the tops of the cliffs
291
292 LAND AND SEA TALES
in combe after combe till you come to
Clovelly and the Hobby and Gallantry
Bower, and the homes of the Devonshire
people that were old when the Armada was
new.
The Burroughs, lying between the school
and the sea, was a waste of bent rush and
grass running out into hundreds of acres of
fascinating sand-hills called the Bunkers,
where a few old people played golf. In the
early days of the School there was a small
Club-house for golfers close to the Pebble-
ridge, but, one wild winter night, the sea got
up and drove the Pebble-ridge clean through
the Club basement, and the walls fell out,
and we rejoiced, for even then golfers wore
red coats and did not like us to use the links.
We played as a matter of course and
thought nothing of it.
Now there is a new Club-house, and cars
take the old, red, excited men to and from
their game and all the great bunkers are
known and written about; but we were there
first, long before golf became a fashion or a
disease, and we turned out one of the earliest
champion amateur golfers of all England.
It was a good place for a school, and that
School considered itself the finest in the
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
29?
world, excepting perhaps Haileybury, be¬
cause it was modelled on Haileybury lines
and our caps were Haileybury colours; and
there was a legend that, in the old days when
the School was new, half the boys had been
Haileyburians.
Our Head-master had been Head of the
Modern Side at Haileybury, and, talking it
over with boys from other public schools
afterwards, I think that one secret of his
great hold over us was that he was not a
clergyman, as so many head-masters are.
As soon as a boy begins to think in the misty
way that boys do, he is suspicious of a man
who punishes him one day and preaches at
him the next. But the Head was different,
and in our different ways we loved him.
Through all of five years I never saw him
lose his temper, nor among two hundred
boys did any one at any time say or hint
that he had his favourites. If you went to
him with any trouble you were heard out to
the end, and answered without being talked
at or about or around, but always to. So
we trusted him absolutely, and when it came
to the choice of the various ways of entering
the Army, what he said was so.
He knew boys naturally better than their
294
LAND AND SEA TALES
fathers knew them, and considerably better
than they knew themselves. When the
time came to read for the Final Army Ex¬
aminations, he knew the temper and powers
of each boy, the amount of training each
would stand and the stimulus or restraint
that each needed, and handled them accord¬
ingly till they had come through the big race
that led into the English Army. Looking
back on it all, one can see the perfect judg¬
ment, knowledge of boys, patience, and
above all, power, that the Head must have
had.
Some of the masters, particularly on the
classical side, vowed that Army examina¬
tions were making education no more than
mark-hunting; but there are a great many
kinds of education, and I think the Head
knew it, for he taught us hosts of things that
we never found out we knew till afterwards.
And surely it must be better to turn out
men who do real work than men who write
about what they think about what other
people have done or ought to do.
A scholar may, as the Latin masters said,
get more pleasure out of his life than an
Army officer, but only little children believe
that a man’s life is given him to decorate with
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 295
pretty little things, as though it were a girl’s
room or a picture-screen. Besides, scholars
are apt, all their lives, to judge from one
point of view only, and by the time that an
Army officer has knocked about the world
for a few years he comes to look at men and
things ‘‘by and large,” as the sailors say.
No books in the world will teach that knack.
So we trusted the Head at school, and
afterwards trusted him more.
There was a boy in the Canadian Mounted
Police, I think, who stumbled into a fortune
— he was the only one of us who ever did —
and as he had never drawn more than seven
shillings a day he very properly wrote to the
Head from out of his North Western wilds
and explained his situation proposing that
the Head should take charge of and look
after all his wealth till he could attend to
it; and was a little impatient when the Head
pointed out that executors and trustees and
that sort of bird wouldn’t hand over cash
in that casual way. The Head was worth
trusting — he saved a boy’s life from diph¬
theria once at much greater risk than being
shot at, and nobody knew anything about
it till years afterwards.
But I come back to the School that he
296 LAND AND SEA TALES
made and put his mark upon. The boys
said that those with whom Cheltenham
could do nothing, whom Sherbourne found
too tough, and whom even Marlborough
had politely asked to leave, had been sent to
the School at the beginning of things and
turned into men. They were, perhaps, a
shade rough sometimes. One very curious
detail, which I have never seen or heard of in
any school before or since, was that the
Army Class, which meant the Prefects, and
was generally made up of boys from seven¬
teen and a half to nineteen or thereabouts,
was allowed to smoke pipes (cigarettes were
then reckoned the direct invention of the
Evil One) in the country outside the College.
One result of this was that, though these
great men talked a good deal about the grain
of their pipes, the beauty of their pouches,
and the flavour of their tobacco, they did
not smoke to any ferocious extent. The
other, which concerned me more directly,
was that it went much harder with a junior
whom they caught smoking than if he had
been caught by a master, because the action
was flagrant invasion of their privilege, and,
therefore, rank insolence — to be punished as
such. Years later, the Head admitted that
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
297
he thought something of this kind would
happen when he gave the permission. If
any Head-master is anxious to put down
smoking nowadays, he might do worse than
give this scheme a trial.
The School motto was, ‘‘Fear God,
Honour the King’’; and so the men she
made went out to Boerland and Zululand
and India and Burma and Cyprus and
Hongkong, and lived or died as gentlemen
and officers.
Even the most notorious bully, for whom
an awful ending was prophesied, went to
Canada and was mixed up in Riel’s rebel¬
lion, and came out of it with a fascinating
reputation of having led a forlorn hope and
behaved like a hero.
All these matters were noted by the older
boys, and when their fathers, the grey-
whiskered colonels and generals, came down
to see them, or the directors, who were
K. C. B.’s and had been officers in their
time, made a tour of inspection, it was re¬
ported that the School tone was “healthy.”
Sometimes an old boy who had blossomed
into a Subaltern of the Queen would come
down for a last few words with the Head¬
master, before sailing with the regiment for
298 LAND AND SEA TALES
foreign parts; and the lower-school boys
were distracted with envy, and the prefects
of the Sixth Form pretended not to be proud
when he walked with one of their number
and talked about ‘‘my men, you know/’
till life became unendurable.
There was an unwritten law by which an
old boy, when he came back to pay his
respects to the School, was entitled to a
night in his old dormitory. The boys ex¬
pected it and sat up half the night listening
to the tales of a subaltern that the boy
brought with him — stories about riots in
Ireland and camps at Aldershot, and all his
first steps in the wonderful world.
Sometimes news came in that a boy had
died with his men fighting, and the school
said, “ Killed in action, of course,” as though
that were an honour reserved for it alone, and
wondered when its own chance would come.
It was a curiously quiet School in many
ways. When a boy was fourteen or fifteen
he was generally taken in hand for the
Army Preliminary Examination, and when
that was past he was put down to “grind”
for the entrance into Sandhurst or Wool¬
wich; for it was our pride that we passed
direct from the School to the Army, without
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
299
troubling the ‘‘crammers/’ We spoke of
“the Shop,” which means Woolwich, as
though we owned it. Sandhurst was our
private reserve; and the old boys came back
from foreign parts and told us that India
was only Westward Ho! spread thin.
On account of this incessant getting ready
for examinations there was hardly time for
us (but we made it) to gather the beautiful
Devonshire apples, or to ferret rabbits in
the sand-hills by the golf-links, and saloon-
pistols were forbidden because boys got to
fighting-parties with dust-shot, and were
careless about guarding their eyes.
Nor were we encouraged to lower each
other over the cliffs with a box-rope and
take the young hawks and jackdaws from
their nests above the sea. Once a rope
broke, or else the boys above grew tired of
holding it, and a boy dropped thirty feet on
to the boulders below. But as he fell on his
head nothing happened, except punishment
at the other end for all concerned.
In summer there was almost unlimited
bathing from the Pebble-ridge, a whale-
backed bank four miles long of rounded
grey boulders, where you were taught to
ride on the rollers as they came in, to avoid
300 LAND AND SEA TALES
the under-tow and to watch your time for
getting back to the beach.
There was a big sea bath, too, in which
all boys had to qualify for open bathing by
swimming a quarter of a mile, at least; and
it was a matter of honour among the school-
houses not to let the summer end with a sin¬
gle boy who could not “do his quarter,’’ at
any rate.
Boating was impossible off that coast, but
sometimes a fishing-boat would be wrecked
on Braunton Bar, and we could see the life¬
boat and the rocket at work; and once just
after chapel there was a cry that the herring
were in. The School ran down to the beach
in their Sunday clothes and fished them out
with umbrellas. They were cooked by hand
afterwards in all the studies and form-rooms
till you could have smelt us at Exeter.
But the game of the School, setting aside
golf, which everyone could play if he had
patience, was foot-ball. Both cricket and
foot-ball were compulsory. That is to say,
unless a boy could show a doctor’s certificate
that he was physically unfit to stand up to
the wicket or go into the scrimmage, he had
to play a certain number of afternoons at
the game of the season. If he had engage-
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
301
ments elsewhere — we called it ‘‘shirking” —
he was reasonably sure of three cuts with a
ground-ash, from the Captain of the Games
delivered cold in the evening. A good
player, of course, could get leave off on any
fair excuse, but it was a beautiful rule for
fat boys and loafers. The only unfairness
was that a Master could load you with an
imposition to be shown up at a certain hour,
which, of course, prevented you from playing
and so secured you a licking in addition to
the imposition. But the Head always told
us that there was not much justice in the
world, and that we had better accustom our¬
selves to the lack of it early.
Curiously enough, the one thing that the
School did not understand was an attempt
to drill it in companies with rifles, by way
of making a volunteer cadet corps. We
took our lickings for not attending that
cheerfully, because we considered it “play¬
ing at soldiers,” and boys reading for the
Army are apt to be very particular on these
points.
We were weak in cricket, but our foot-ball
team (Rugby Union) at its best devastated
the country from BlundelPs — we always
respected Blundell’s because “Great John
302 LAND AND SEA TALES
Ridd” had been educated there — to Exeter,
whose team were grown men. Yet we, who
had been taught to play together, once drove
them back over the November mud, back to
their own goal-posts, till the ball was hacked
through and touched down, and you could
hear the long-drawn yell of ‘‘ Schoo-oo/
Schoo-oo/.'” as far as Appledore.
When the enemy would not come to us
our team went to the enemy, and if victor¬
ious, would return late at night in a three-
horse brake, chanting:
It’s a way we have in the Army,
It’s a way we have in the Navy,
It’s a way we have in the Public Schools,
Which nobody can deny!
Then the boys would flock to the dormi¬
tory^ windows, and wave towels and join in
the ‘‘Hip-hip-hip-hurrah!” of the chorus,
and the winning team would swagger
through the dormitories and show the beau¬
tiful blue marks on their shins, and the little
boys would be allowed to get sponges and
hot water.
Very few things that the world can offer
make up for having missed a place in the
First Fifteen, with its black jersey and white
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
303
— snow-white — knickerbockers, and the vel¬
vet skull-cap with the gold tassel — the cap
that you leave out in the rain and acci¬
dentally step upon to make it look as old
as if you had been in the First Fifteen for
years.
The other outward sign of the First
Fifteen that the happy boy generally wore
through a hard season was the “jersey-
mark"’ — a raw, red scrape on ear and jaw¬
bone where the skin had been fretted by the
rough jerseys in either side in the steady
drive of many scrimmages. We were train¬
ed to put our heads down, pack in the
shape of a wedge and shove, and it was in
that shape that the First Fifteen stood up to
a team of trained men for two and twenty
counted minutes. We got the ball through
in the end.
At the close of the winter term, when there
were no more foot-ball teams to squander
and the Christmas holidays were coming,
the School set itself to the regular yearly
theatricals — a farce and a three-act play all
complete. Sometimes it was “The Rivals,”
or sometimes an attempt at a Shakespearean
play; but the farces were the most popular.
All ended with the School-Saga, the “ Vive
304 LAND AND SEA TALES
la Compagnie r in which the Senior boy of
the School chanted the story of the School
for the past twelve months. It was very
long and very difficult to make up, though
all the poets of all the forms had been at
work on it for weeks; and the School gave
the chorus at the top of its voice.
On the last Sunday of the term the last
hymn in chapel was ‘‘Onward, Christian
Soldiers.” We did not know what it meant
then, and we did not care, but we stood up
and sang it till the music was swamped in
the rush. The big verse, like the “tug-of-
war” verse in Mrs. Ewing’s “Story of a
Short Life,” was:
We are not divided,
All one body we,
One in faith and doctrine.
One in charity.
Then the organ would give a hurricane
of joyful roars, and try to get us in hand be¬
fore the refrain. Later on, meeting our
men all the world over, the meaning of that
hymn became much too plain.
Except for this outbreak we were not very
pious. There was a boy who had to tell
stories night after night in the Dormitory,
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 305
and when his stock ran out he fell back on a
book called ‘‘Eric, or Little by Little,’’ as
comic literature, and read it till the gas was
turned off. The boys laughed abominably,
and there was some attempt to give selec¬
tions from it at the meeting of the Reading
Society. That was quashed by authority
because it was against discipline.
There were no public-houses near us
except tap-rooms that sold cider; and raw
Devonshire cider can only be drunk after a
long and very hot paper-chase. We hardly
ever saw, and certainly never spoke to,
anything in the nature of a woman from one
year’s end to the other; for our masters were
all unmarried. Later on, a little colony of
mothers came down to live near the School,
but their sons were day-boys who couldn’t
do this and mustn’t do that, and there was
a great deal too much dressing up on week¬
days and going out to tea, and things of that
kind, which, whatever people say nowadays,
are not helpful for boys at work.
Our masters, luckily, were never gushing.
They did not call us Dickie or Johnnie or
Tommy, but Smith or Thompson; and when
we were undoubtedly bad we were actually
and painfully beaten with an indubitable
3o6 land and sea TALES
cane on a veritable back till we wept un¬
feigned tears. Nobody seemed to think
that it brutalized our finer feelings, but
everybody was relieved when the trouble
was over.
Canes, especially when they are brought
down with a drawing stroke, sting like hor¬
nets; but they are a sound cure for certain
offences; and a cut or two, given with no
malice, but as a reminder, can correct and
keep corrected a false quantity or a wander¬
ing mind, more completely than any amount
of explanation.
There was one boy, however, to whom
every Latin quantity was an arbitrary mys¬
tery, and he wound up his crimes by suggest¬
ing that he could do better if Latin verse
rhymed as decent verse should. He was
given an afternoon’s reflection to purge him¬
self of his contempt; and feeling certain that
he was in for something rather warm, he
turned Donee grains eram^^ into pure
Devonshire dialect, rhymed, and showed it
up as his contribution to the study of
Horace.
He was let off, and his master gave him
the run of a big library, where he found as
much verse and prose as he wanted; but
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
307
that ruined his Latin verses and made him
write verses of his own. There he found all
the English poets from Chaucer to Matthew
Arnold, and a book called “Imaginary
Conversations’’ which he did not under¬
stand, but it seemed to be a good thing to
imitate. So he imitated and was handed
up to the Head, who said that he had better
learn Russian under his own eye, so that if
ever he were sent to Siberia for lampooning
the authorities he might be able to ask for
things.
That meant the run of another library —
English Dramatists this time; hundreds of
old plays; as well as thick brown books of
voyages told in language like the ringing of
bells. And the Head would sometimes tell
him about the manners and customs of the
Russians, and sometimes about his own
early days at college, when several people who
afterwards became great, were all young,
and the Head was young with them, and
they wrote wonderful things in college
magazines.
It was beautiful and cheap — dirt cheap, at
the price of a permanent load of impositions,
for neglecting mathematics and algebra.
The School started a Natural History
308 LAND AND SEA TALES
Society, which took the birds and plants of
North Devon under its charge, reporting
first flowerings and first arrivals and new
discoveries to learned societies in London,
and naturally attracting to itself every boy
in the School who had the poaching instinct.
Some of us made membership an excuse
for stealing apples and pheasant eggs and
geese from farmers’ orchards and gentle¬
men’s estates, and we were turned out with
disgrace. So we spoke scornfully of the
Society ever afterwards. None the less,
some of us had our first introduction to gun¬
powder in the shape of a charge of salt
which stings like bees, fired at our legs by
angry game-keepers.
The institution that caused some more
excitement was the School paper. Three
of the boys, who had moved up the School
side by side for four years and were allies
in all things, started the notion as soon as
they came to the dignity of a study of their
own with a door that would lock. The
other two told the third boy what to write,
and held the staircase against invaders.
It was a real printed paper of eight pages,
and at first the printer was more thoroughly
ignorant of type-setting, and the Editor was
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
309
more completely ignorant of proof-readings
than any printer and any Editor that ever
was. It was printed off by a gas engine; and
even the engine despised its work, for one
day it fell through the floor of the shop, and
crashed — still working furiously — into the
cellar.
The paper came out at odd times and
seasons, but every time it came out there
was sure to be trouble, because the Editor
was learning for the first time how sweet
and good and profitable it is — and how nice
it looks on the page — to make fun of people
in actual print.
For instance, there was friction among the
study-fags once, and the Editor wrote a de¬
scriptive account of the Lower School, — the
classes whence the fags were drawn, — their
manners and customs, their ways of cook¬
ing half-plucked sparrows and imperfectly
cleaned blackbirds at the gas-jets on a
rusty nib, and their fights over sloe-jam
made in a gallipot. It was an absolutely
truthful article, but the Lower School knew
nothing about truth, and would not even
consider it as literature.
It is less safe to write a study of an entire
class than to discuss individuals one by
310 LAND AND SEA TALES
one; but apart from the fact that boys throw
books and inkpots with a straighter eye,
there is very little difference between the
language of grown-up people and that of
children.
In those days the Editor had not learned
this; so when the study below the Editorial
study threw coal at the Editorial legs and
kicked in the panels of the door, because of
personal paragraphs in the last number,
the Editorial Staff — and there never was so
loyal and hard-fighting a staff — fried fat
bacon till there was half an inch of grease
in the pan, and let the greasy chunks down
at the end of a string to bob against and
defile the lower study windows.
When that lower study — and there never
was a public so low and unsympathetic as
that lower study — looked out to see what
was frosting their window-panes, the Edi¬
torial Staff emptied the hot fat on their
heads, and it stayed in their hair for days
and days, wearing shiny to the very last.
The boy who suggested this sort of war¬
fare was then reading a sort of magazine,
called Fors Clavigera, which he did not in
the least understand, — it was not exactly a
boy’s paper, — and when the lower study had
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
311
scraped some of the fat off their heads and
were thundering with knobby pokers on the
door-lock, this boy began to chant pieces of
the Fors as a war-song, and to show that his
mind was free from low distractions. He
was an extraordinary person, and the only
boy in the School who had a genuine con¬
tempt for his masters. There was no affec¬
tation in his quiet insolence. He honestly
did despise them; and threats that made us
all wince only caused him to put his head a
little on one side and watch the master as a
sort of natural curiosity.
The worst of this was that his allies had
to take their share of his punishments, for
they lived as communists and socialists hope
to live one day, when everybody is good.
They were bad, as bad as they dared to be,
but their possessions were in common, ab¬
solutely. And when ‘The Study” was
out of funds they took the most respectable
clothes in possession of the Syndicate, and
leaving the owner one Sunday and one
week-day suit, sold the rest in Bideford
town. Later, when there was another
crisis, it was not the respectable one’s watch
that was taken by force for the good of the
Study and pawned, and never redeemed.
312 LAND AND SEA TALES
Later still, money came into the Syndi¬
cate honestly, for a London paper that did
not know with whom it was dealing, pub¬
lished and paid a whole guinea for some
verses that one of the boys had written and
sent up under a nom-de-plume, and the
Study caroused on chocolate and condensed
milk and pilchards and Devonshire cream,
and voted poetry a much sounder business
than it looks.
So things went on very happily till the
three were seriously warned that they must
work in earnest, and stop giving amateur
performances of ‘‘Aladdin” and writing
librettos of comic operas which never came
off, and worrying their house-masters into
grey hairs.
Then they all grew very good, and one
of them got into the Army; and another —
the Irish one — became an engineer, and the
third one found himself on a daily paper
half a world away from the Pebble-ridge and
the sea-beach. The three swore eternal
friendship before they parted, and from time
to time they met boys of their year in India,
and magnified the honour of the old School.
The boys are scattered all over the world,
one to each degree of land east and west, as
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
313
their fathers were before them, doing much
the same kind of work; and it is curious to
notice how little the character of the man
differs from that of the boy of sixteen or
seventeen.
The general and commander-in-chief of
the Study, he who suggested selling the
clothes, never lost his head even when he
andhis friends were hemmed round by the en¬
emy — the Drill Sergeant — far out of bounds
and learning to smoke under a hedge. He
was sick and dizzy, but he rose to the occas¬
ion, took command of his forces, and by
strategic manoeuvres along dry ditches and
crawlings through tall grass, outflanked the
enemy and got into safe ground without
losing one man of the three.
A little later, when he was a subaltern in
India, he was bitten by a mad dog, went to
France to be treated by Pasteur, and came
out again in the heat of the hot weather to
find himself almost alone in charge of six
hundred soldiers, and his Drill Sergeant dead
and his office clerk run away, leaving the
Regimental books in the most ghastly con¬
fusion. Then we happened to meet; and
as he was telling his story there was just
the same happy look on his face as when he
314 LAND AND SEA TALES
steered us down the lanes with the certainty
of a superior thrashing if we were caught.
And there were others who went abroad
with their men, and when they got into
tight places behaved very much as they had
behaved at foot-ball.
The boy who used to take flying jumps
on to the ball and roll over and over with it,
because he was big and fat and could not
run, took a flying jump onto a Burmese
dacoit whom he had surprised by night in a
stockade; but he forgot that he was much
heavier than he had been at School, and by
the time he rolled off his victim the little
dacoit was stone dead.
And there was a boy who was always be¬
ing led astray by bad advice, and begging
off punishment on that account. He got
into some little scrape when he grew up, and
we who knew him knew, before he was rep¬
rimanded by his commanding officer, ex¬
actly what his excuse would be. It came
out almost word for word as he was used to
whimper it at School. He was cured,
though by being sent off on a small expedi¬
tion where he alone would be responsible
for any advice that was going, as well as
for fifty soldiers.
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 315
And the best boy of all — he was really
good, not book good — was shot in the thigh
as he was leading his men up the ramp of a
fortress. All he said was, ‘‘Put me up against
that tree and take my men on”; and when
the men came back he was dead.
Ages and ages ago, when Queen Victoria
was shot at by a man in the street, the
School paper made some verses about it that
ended like this:
One school of many, made to make
Men who shall hold it dearest right
To battle for their ruler’s sake,
And stake their being in the fight.
Sends greeting, humble and sincere.
Though verse be rude and poor and mean.
To you, the greatest as most dear,
Victoria, by God’s Grace, our Queen!
Such greetings as should come from those
Whose fathers faced the Sepoy hordes.
Or served you in the Russian snows
And dying, left their sons their swords.
For we are bred to do your will
By land and sea, wherever flies
The Flag to fight and follow still.
And work your empire’s destinies.
3i6 land and sea TALES
Once more we greet you, though unseen
Our greetings be, and coming slow.
Trust us, if need arise, O Queen!
We shall not tarry with the blow.
And there are one or two places in the
world that can bear witness how the School
kept its word.
A COUNTING-OUT SONG
f\
A
A COUNTING-OUT SONG
WHAT is the song the children sing
When doorway lilacs bloom in Spring,
And the Schools are loosed, and the games
are played
That were deadly earnest when Earth was
made ?
Hear them chattering, shrill and hard.
After dinner-time, out in the yard.
As the sides are chosen and all submit
To the chance of the lot that shall make
them ‘‘It.”
(Singing) Eenee^ MeeneCy MaineCy Mo!
Catch a nigger hy the toe !
If he hollers let him go
Eeneey Meeneey Maine ey Mo !
Y ou — are — It ! ’ ’
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo
Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago,
When the Pole of the Earth sloped thirty
degrees.
And Central Europe began to freeze,
319
320 LAND AND SEA TALES
And they needed Ambassadors staunch and
stark
To steady the Tribes in the gathering dark:
But the frost was fierce and flesh was frail,
So they launched a Magic that could not
fail.
(Singing) Eenee^ Meenee^ Mainee, Mo !
Hear the wolves across the snow t
Someone has to kill Vm — so
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee^ Mo
Make — you — It H
Slowly the Glacial Epoch passed,
Central Europe thawed out at last;
And, under the slush of the melting snows^
The first dim shapes of the Nations rose.
Rome, Britannia, Belgium, Gaul —
Flood and avalanche fathered them all;
And the First Big Four, as they watched the
mess,
Pitied Man in his helplessness.
(Singing) ^^Eenee^ Meenee^ Mainee, Mo!
Trouble starts when Nations
grow.
Someone has to stop it — so
Eeneey Meenee^ Mainee^ Mo
Make — you — It
A COUNTING-OUT SONG 321
Thus it happened, but none can tell
What was the Power behind the spell —
Fear, or Duty, or Pride, or Faith —
That sent men shuddering out to death —
To cold and watching, and, worse than
these.
Work, more work, when they looked for
ease —
To the day’s discomfort, the night’s de¬
spair.
In the hope of a prize that they never would
share.
(Singing) “ EeneCy Meenee^ Mainee^ Mo !
Man is born to toil and zvoe.
One will cure the other — so
Eenee, Meeneey Mainee^ Mo
Make — you — It^
Once and again, as the Ice went North
The grass crept up to the Firth of
Forth.
Once and again, as the Ice came South
The glaciers ground over Lossiemouth.
But, grass or glacier, cold or hot,
Men went out who would rather not,
322 LAND AND SEA TALES
And fought with the Tiger, the Pig and the
Ape,
To hammer the world into decent shape.
(Singing) Eenee^ Meenee, Mainee^ Mo !
Whaf s the use of doing so ?
Ask the Gods, for we donf
know;
But Eenee, Meenee, Mainee,
Mo
Make — us — It !”
'Nothing is left of that terrible rune
But a tag of gibberish tacked to a tune
That ends the waiting and settles the claims
Of children arguing over their games;
For never yet has a boy been found
To shirk his turn when the turn came round;
Or even a girl has been known to say
,“If you laugh at me I sha’n’t play.”
For — Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo,
Dont you let the grown-ups know!
You may hate it ever so.
But if you re chose youLfc
bound to go.
When Eenee, Meenee, Mainee,
Mo
Make — you — It W
THE END
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